Missed The Point

I just saw the Lovely Bones movie and I was sad.
Not because of the content but because it missed the point.
It missed the point by so much.

If you have seen the movie trailers or read the book you know what it is about.
So I am not giving anything away by saying it is about the murder of a young girl.
That should be sad and depressing, but in her amazing book Alice Sebold has given us a thing of beauty and love.

The beauty of a life after death, where people who are cheated in this life by an early death can go to live some more and learn and love.
Love in a family that is not stopped by someone else's evil.
A beautiful dream space where the deceased can watch over their loved ones and see justice done.

At work I am always telling people to buy this book, I tell them it is amazing and uplifting, and they give me a look as if to say " Are you nuts its about a child murder" , but nearly every time they come back and tell me how wonderful and up lifting it was and how they are now going to buy it for everyone they know.


Sometimes I think we just have to understand that some ideas will not be taken from the page and put on film. Some ideas are to beautiful and complex to be put in the world out side of books. I would hate for someone to see the movie and then not read the book because of the movie. The book is so uplifting and life affirming and the movie weighted me down and left me sad, for days.

And now to Stanley Tucci. They got his charaactor so very wronge and by getting him wrong it made a lot else seem wrong. Why on earth was he doing a Dustin Hoffman voice? Why did this normally stellar actor make the bad guy into a near cartoon, rendering his evil to Dr Evil type nonsense?

So my friends is you have a spare $20 and it is a toss up between the movie and the book, get the book. The movie will just leave you sad for days, whereas the book will lift you up and give you more then you had before.

And isn't that what great art is meant to give us?



http://www.lovelybones.com/#home

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Sebold