November 18, 2005
Yesterday, Girish wrote a post on favored literary adaptations, and I wrote in the comments that the one of the great never-realized-adaptation must surely be the Coen Brothers' failed attempt to bring James Dickey's To The White Sea to the screen. Dickey's novel, a tale of a crashed WWII bomber escaping firebombed Tokyo and making his way North to the frozen plains of Hokkaido, is a tome of primal, mythic poetry masquerading as prose. It is extreme in its violence and grace, and by all accounts, the Coens' screenplay was almost a direct transcription of the text; past the first few pages, it was essentially a silent film. For those Coen fans who loved Fargo, which for all its bitterness remains their one film that transcends postmodernity, this might have been a near awe-inspiring follow-up. I've never forgotten the first few lines of the screenplay, transcribed in a review from way back at the turn of the century, and, with the novel in mind, the possibilities imminent in them:
FADE IN
Cobalt blue.
A dark speck is just visible in the center of the screen. It resolves itself into a sea bird, flying toward us.
Brad Pitt was attached to star (making this the second circa-2000 project of his that fell apart, along with The Fountain), and cameras were getting ready to role; but 20th Century Fox reportedly could not reconcile themselves with the 20 million the Coens needed to shoot the film on location. The project went into turnaround, and instead of To The White Sea, we got the middling Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers; the brothers went from a passion project to being writer/directors for hire on projects in which, for the first time, the general criticism that they loathed their own characters seemed quite astute. I'm sure there are dots to be connected there.
So yesterday, not five minutes after making that post at Girish's site, I turned over to the Austin Chronicle and read that the Coens are thinking of making their next film in Austin. What might that movie be? An adapatation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men.
More dots to connect. For anyone who has read the two novels, it's not at all hard to imagine that this new project might essentially be a replacement for the former. No Country For Old Men is more hard boiled novel, but out of those genre conventions McCarthy indulges in arise the same mythic leitmotifs that he made so prevalent in The Crossing and Blood Meridian - and which Dickey explores in To The White Sea as well, and which the Coens stood on the precipice of when they wrote this, one of the closing monologues in Fargo:
...So that was Mrs. Lundergaard in there? I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper...and those three people in Brainerd...and for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than money, you know. Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day...well...
...I just don't unnerstand it.
Just reading that dialogue leaves me confident that McCarthy's novel is in good hands. As for To The White Sea, if it isn't made sooner, it'll be made later (and I certainly wouldn't mind having a hand in it, if the opportunity arose), but in the meantime, I recommend it without reservation. As a teaser of sorts, I've posted a poem of his, The Heaven Of Animals, after the jump...
THE HEAVEN OF ANIMALSHere they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.For some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their preyMay take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walkUnder such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without painAt the cycle's center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.-- James Dickey
Posted by David Lowery at November 18, 2005 03:18 PM
Comments
Ashamed to say: never knew about the Dickey book.
Posted by: girish at November 19, 2005 02:53 PM
hey david, give me your mccarthy rundown..i read blood meridian a couple of months back and loved it, and am curious where to go from here.
great post btw :) i too was unaware of the dickey book..i'll pick it up soon i think
Posted by: brad at November 19, 2005 04:52 PM
Brad - here we go, in order of best to least best.
The Crossing (my personal fave)
Blood Meridian (generally regarded as his masterpiece)
All The Pretty Horses/Cities Of The Plain (the latter book, the third part of the Border Trilogy, isn't on the level of the other two and shouldn't be this high on the list, but it you read the first two, you'll definitely want to read the last)
No Country For Old Men
Suttree (semi-autobiographical, sprawling, hilarious, sad, Dickens-by-way-of-Faulkner)
Outer Dark / Child Of God (two slim novels about deep dark evil - to be read back to back, late at night by candelight)
The Orchard Keeper (his first novel, a little rough, but if you're a completist, you should read it)
Girish - I haven't met many peoiple who have heard of the Dickey novel, much less read it. So I do what I can to pass the word on...
Posted by: Ghostboy at November 19, 2005 08:39 PM