Achieving Happiness

(A Book and Film review of Peter Carey’s ‘Oscar and Lucinda’)

It would be foolish to expect that the medium of film can completely capture the range of sentience and profundity good literature possesses. Nevermind the space-age, technological developments in film-making — not even George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic can reflect on screen the harsh tenderness of Heathcliff’s character in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights;’ or the sad discourse into people’s tragic flaws and weaknesses in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. It’s always a hit and miss thing when the written word is translated on celluloid. Sometimes it works, and wonderfully; and sometimes it fails miserably, and makes one want to tear the red, fake-leather movie theater seat covers to shreds.

The first is the case with the 1997 Fox Searchlight interpretation of Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda. Oscar and Lucinda the book is a novel of expansive proportions, covering issues of colonial history and morality, commerce and religion while telling a romance between two most original characters. Taking place in 19th century New South Wales or Australia, the story revolves around Oscar Hopkins, a nervous, child-like Anglican minister and a compulsive gambler; and Lucinda Leplastrier, a strong-willed heiress, also obsessed with gambling. They meet under the most original of circumstances, and together commiserate to bring a pre-manufactured glass chapel to the backwoods of then still-untamed Australia.

Sensitive prose

The book was awarded the British Booker Prize in 1988, and deserves many more such awards because Carey’s prose is insightful , intellectual, and sensitive. The characters of Oscar and Lucinda are described so that one forms a Kodak-ektacolor picture of them walking, talking, living. Carey has succeed in creating two characters that are so fleshed out, that one might think that they were actual people Carey had once before met. By no means is Carey’s language sentimental: his diction is erudite yet at the same time popular, and reaches both into the reader’s intellect and emotions. His is the ability to describe commonplace glass and turn it, with words and imagination, into crystal.

The book is filled with detailed descriptions of turn- of- the century England and Australia. It is a veritable tableau of glassblowers, Methodists, cauliflower-transporting seafarers, and office clerks. Carey is not one to use words sparingly when he delineates the color of the sky, or the texture of newly-wet grass; and neither did he economize in describing the turbulence within and between the two youths as they set out to overcome such challenges posed by a society they did not exactly fit in. After the last paragraph rounds off, the reader, as the blurb says, realizes that ‘the world is never going to look the same way again.’

Each chapter of O&L is titled sparingly, and non-dramatically — The Church, Stethoscope, Raisins, The Vicarage Kitchen, Happiness — but these one, two-word titles already they serve as introductions to each development in the lives of the main characters. In the chapter Apostasy, for instance, the young Oscar makes his first gamble when he seeks questions on the righteousness his father’s Methodist fate by randomly throwing a chipped rock on a surface he scratched with symbols . He assigns a particular meaning to each of the five, six symbols, and as he throws the specially chosen rock over his shoulder, standing with his back to front, he whispers his query – believing that the where the rock lands is God’s answer. Ever after, Oscar considers gambling as a way of consulting Divine wisdom.

Unique characters

As a study in human character, Oscar and Lucinda reveal two characters whose uniqueness lie in the circumstances both have to contend with; and in their specific response to these same circumstances. Oscar loves his strict, orthodox father; but being convinced that his father is ‘in error,’ leaves the house at 14 and moves in with ‘the damned,’ an Anglican minister and his wife.

Oscar is described as stick thin, pale and fragile-looking. His face is ‘sweet’ and ‘heart-shaped,’ and his hands ‘cold and clumsy-like.’ Underneath the frail physical frame, however, is a spirit strong enough to defy the rigors of weeks-long journey through oceans and rough terrain; a man whose faith in what he knows to be right burns like fiercely.

Lucinda, meanwhile, is not quite the stereotype heroine. Oh she has the princess look – porcelain skin, straight teeth, dainty feet; but her dark hair often resembles a well-used mop, and she insists on wearing bloomers at a time when the precursor of women’s jeans was considered a disgrace. Almost androgynous and most singular in her way of thought, Lucinda would rather play Dutch Hazards in train cars filled with racing types than sip tea in parlors. She was raised by pioneer parents, independent thinkers who saw nothing wrong in letting their daughter romp in the fields and nevermind lessons in coquetry.

On her 10th birthday, her parents gift Lucinda with a Prince Rupert drop, a teardrop-shaped piece of glass virtually indestructible, seemingly permanent in its beauty. Neither a hatchet blow or a the crushing weight of an anvil can damage it; yet it shatters when its tail is clipped with a basic pair of pliers. Lucinda bursts into tears when this happens. Years later, when presented with another Prince Rupert, she hastens to rescue it from being clipped.

Seemingly separate and detached from each other, the chapters build resolutely towards a climax that is both expected yet still sharply surprising. Carey puts one over the reader; first lulling the reader into complacency that the novel will end happily, and the characters will enjoy the rest of their lives in bliss. This does not happen, and though one ends up wanting to strangle Carey for such an ending, it is impossible not to respect him for thinking of it. Film and Fiction One can go on and on describing the universe Carey was able to create within the book - the slightest nuance of thought and feeling experienced by his characters make one think and feel, too; and to view the world and people differently, with more discernment, with less cynicism. And the film, faithful to its source, succeeds in doing the same.

First, the production design. The book includes in its strong literary points the artistry of the delineated physical context and images. In the movie, the production design does not cease to amaze. The race tracks, the churches, the ocean that refuses to swallow the clothes Oscar’s grief-stricken father throws against its froth, and finally, the delicate ‘kennel of angels’ Oscar and Lucinda created and attempted to transport as a silent but unmistakable proof of their mutual affection: all were transposed onto screen, words given flesh and visual form.

Australia’s clean heat and perpetual autumn colors formed the backdrop of the movie’s second half; well-balanced with the first half’s watery blues, greens, and the earth tones of the country houses. Laura Jones’ screenplay resonates with a beauty all its own. She was able to compress — with skillful transitions — the most essential events in the book without removing any of their significance and impact.

The screenplay was so written that it makes one positively long to read the original material. Conclusively, the cast and crew of O&L should very well commend themselves for producing such a movie. The film revealed on screen the Oscar and Lucinda Carey had so effectively and convincingly brought to life, straining through and against the paper and printer’s ink. Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett played the title roles, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that had the studio chosen other people, the movie wouldn’t have turned out so sparklingly, and may well have fallen flat.

The supporting roles, played by Australians and British actors Ciaran Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Richard Roxburgh and Billie Brown were also studied carefully .The result is a film so well-performed it might as well have been real life nakedly filmed.

Fiennes was reported to have starved himself and lost some 20 pounds just so he could look and feel the part of the ascetic, angel-souled Oscar. His gifts as a thespian alone would’ve carried him well through his role; but Fiennes’ sacrifice is very much appreciated because to any reader of the original book who also saw the movie, the emaciated Fiennes was Oscar physicalized — gangly arms; pale, sunken cheeks; fragile wrists and expressive eyes. Fiennes was able to enter his role so completely, and so effortlessly that one wonders if Carey had Fiennes in mind when he wrote the book.

In the scene where Oscar tentatively reaches out to hold Lucinda, he is shy and lost and vulnerable: a perfect foil against Lucinda’s strength. Blanchett, meanwhile, plays the female lead like she was born into the role. Her walk, her mien, her indifference to losing five guineas on a game of fan tan was Lucinda’s. Blanchett exposes Lucinda’s secret insecurities (her being an orphan gave her a loneliness touching to behold) through the way she twists her handkerchief, lowers her head with painful grace, whenever faced with a situation she is loath to confront. One aches to see her and Fiennes together as O&L, and one ends up holding one’s breath as they brave their respective weaknesses, and cautiously, gently venture into a friendship defiant of social criticism, and anchored on deep and unabiding trust .

Finally, Oscar and Lucinda, the book and the movie, is highly cerebral, pointedly visceral. It carries both pathos and a sense of unstinting, cruel inevitability . In the book, the movement of the story at the beginning appears directionless, soon reveals itself determinedly unstoppable, especially in the final 10, 15 short chapters. The shift in phasing becomes a cause for worry; not because the writing falters into awkwardness, but because one senses ill tiding for the two lead characters. The film is the same, with the scenes merging swiftly into the next, stripping away through scene by relentless scene any guesses or hopes the audience has on how the story will end.

The plot and plot development strain at the leash of critical analysis, yet at the same time nudges one towards plain acceptance of the higher powers (the author’s will, the inevitable outcome of such a plot) that asserted themselves over the reader’s own wishes for the characters. At the end of the book, one feels spent emotionally and mentally.

At the end of the movie, one wishes to clap but is too exhausted to do so. Seldom does one find a movie that can stir both the mental and emotional senses the way its original source — a good novel, a stirring play — can. Columbian fishermen, according to writer Eduardo Galeano, call it sentipensante, the harmony of the spirit , the heart, and the mind. Oscar and Lucinda gracefully crosses the difficult boundaries between the medium of the written word and film, and between thought and feeling. #

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