<PERSON>
as a person of having read the book experience…
feels hard to fully imagine how this plays without all the nuance and emotional shading that the knowledge of JCO’s - admittedly still v messy - novel (a text (and author) i still truly have maaany qualms and moments of pause with, as i do…this…adaptation lol) affords you in filling in the gaps of <PERSON> as a character and her interiority that are left by AD’s pretty slapdash adaptation work…
like it’s partially the inherent trade off that often comes with the transition of mediums, duh, but god is this still missing so much of how <PERSON> writes norma - obv with the direct 1st person passages, interweaving of her poetry & artistry etc, but even the passages in the novel that aren’t directly from <PERSON>’s pov are constructed by <PERSON> in such a dissociative way that it just strengthens the character psychology she’s running with (whether that’s accurate or misguided itself is its own can of worms lol) and i do think, even tho AD’s approach is so mood-piecey, that a huge chunk of that work and nuance and context is soooo lost in the adaptational structuring and direction of this (though i don’t think any of that is on <PERSON>, who i think is giiiiiiving it and bringing as much of that text through as she can in spite of AD, and much of what does remain feels indebted to her & the source text - she has lots of great moments but the scene where she’s advised to break it off with the gemini and the scene when she initially turns down GPB are such good smaller bits of performance that rly stuck w me tbh imo)
was thinking a lot during watching about how in the novel i feel like <PERSON> oft focuses so much on the inherent perversity of (and potential for dehumanisation held by) the camera & cinema, especially in its complicity in forming the collective memory - the mythic moulding of a person into persona - and <PERSON> has seemingly run with that as his main pathway into taking this mammoth of a text into a visual medium, in a way that i don’t think is always ~entirely~ unsuccessful or worthless (and is occasionally pretty staggering in the sheer grandiosity of the image-making and creativity of craft) but — coupled with his utter refusal to engage with or comprehensively depict <PERSON>'s master of her artistry and innate genius — ultimately lacks the (somewhat present in the novel, albeit thru the context of literature/fairytales/journalism etc) degree of self-reflection and self-interrogation that transmuting this specific text/story into this specific medium requires, if one is to do it all…
and defffffff also doesn’t help that i think it’s sooo clear - espesh as recently extra-textually evidenced by his cavalcade of awful deranged pull quotes in promotion of this lol - he severeeeeely lacks the level & amount of sincere respect, empathy & admiration <PERSON> (while still making choices i balked at while reading, and many a pause-worthy press comment of her own in interviews about the book) v clearly has for <PERSON> as a subject, artist and person 80