Dorian Gray

[la_belle_laide]

I just watched this movie of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The short version is that it deviated too wildly from the novel for me to enjoy it, but Ben Barnes did a good job being lovely. (A quick aside: I see he's played a character called Neil McCormick. Different movie, but even reading that name freaks me out.)

The long version is that I could maybe have dealt with the plot deviating like crazy, if the characters hadn't done the same – especially Lord Henry. He was a bit of a conundrum for me in the book: he was sleazy, vain, and pretentious, but was he truly a Dr. Frankenstein? Did he purposely create what Dorian became, just to see if he could? Or was he just talking out his ass the whole time: "la dee da, it's fun to be evil, LOL! No but really, let's have tea." Lord Henry was totally insidious, but I had fun trying to decide if he was honestly bad, or just a naughty person being taken way too seriously by a gullible kid.

This was basically a movie about orgies. What I mean to say is, there were subtleties in the book that I guess they just couldn't portray in the movie. I got that there was sexiness going on in the book. I got that Basil was more than just infatuated with Dorian – and that Henry was, too. I got that Dorian went all over London banging everyone and everything. It was implied, but there was tons of plot and development around it.

The other thing I feel like got screwed up was the painting itself. In the book, it was really scary. Interesting that the painting showed more the effects of cruelty rather than time. But in this movie, the painting sort of, I don't know, growled and stuff. It got all maggoty and bloody, and growled at people. (Though the one thing I liked was that it looked like the painting had syphilis or gonorrhea or something. That was kind of a neat touch.) Subtle is creepy. The growling was just funny.

It irked the hell out of me in this movie how various characters died, or in some cases, tried to murder each other. Okay, one can't really spoil Dorian Gray, can one? So I'm not going to cut this or anything.

GDI, how could this movie have made Henry turn against Dorian, enough so that he would kill him? WTF was that even about? Henry was fascinated by him to the very end; he thought Dorian was marvelous no matter what. Even when Dorian confessed to murdering Basil, Henry was like "LMAO shut up, you did not."

"You are quite perfect. Pray, don't change."

"You are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first."

"Yes, you are the same. I wonder what the rest of your life will be. Don't spoil it by renunciations. At present you are a perfect type. Don't make yourself incomplete. You are quite flawless now. You need not shake your head: you know you are."

So, I don't know what all this cockadoodee is about Dorian trying to get with Henry's daughter and Henry finding out about the portrait and trying to kill him etc.


And for the movie to leave out the best line of the book!

"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

It was pretty, though, the movie. So that's something.