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Sanitizing the Bones
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
In order to “make a film that teenagers could watch,” Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones excises the blockbuster book’s lynchpin rape and doesn’t show the murder. Was he right to do so?
Long before the Lord of the Rings trilogy vaulted Peter Jackson into the record books, he seemed eager to challenge his audiences, depicting puppet sex and gore in Meet the Feebles and flesh-eating aliens in Bad Taste. He even introduced Kate Winslet to the world as a deranged teenager who bludgeons a woman to death with a hammer in Heavenly Creatures.
But at a press conference last weekend, Jackson invoked his sense of morality when questioned about his decision to excise a crucial—albeit, wrenching—plot point from his adaptation of The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold’s blockbuster 2002 novel about a 14 year old who is raped, murdered, and dismembered by her next-door neighbor. In Jackson’s film, Susie Salmon doesn’t get raped. The murder happens off-screen. And though her family falls apart in its grief, Jackson chose to cut scenes of her mother’s adulterous affair with the crime’s investigator.
“To make Lovely Bones without the rape,” said UCLA’s Richard Walter, a fan of the novel, “is like making Titanic and leaving out the iceberg.”
Speaking to a crowd of journalists, Jackson explained in a measured, matter-of-fact tone that some things—like the depraved acts conjured by Sebold—just don’t belong on a 60-foot screen. He wanted a PG-13 rating. He wanted his own 13-year-old daughter to see the film. He didn’t aim to make a film for the fans of the novel.
“I’ve shot some pretty extreme things in my time,” said Jackson, referencing his “slashstick” films of the 1980s and early 1990s. “And there’s a certain style and sense of humor you can do to get away with that. But to do anything that depicted violence, especially to a young person in a way that was serious, to me, I would have no interest in filming. It would be repulsive.”
So Jackson depicted the scene leading up to the murder, an unbearable few minutes with an almost unrecognizable Stanley Tucci rendered reptilian in blue contacts hovering over a trembling Saoirse Ronan, savoring her terror and the horror to come. “There were pieces in the script originally that were a little more graphic,” said Tucci. “In our conversations, we all agreed we don’t need to see this.” It ends with Ronan’s young Susie escaping her captor as an ephemeral spirit, breathlessly fleeing into the afterlife.
Sebold, on the other hand, looks the horror right in the face. (The author was herself brutally raped as a college freshman, an experience she chronicled in her first book, Lucky.) By page 15 of The Lovely Bones, the reader has witnessed the rape in a hole dug deep beneath a cornfield less than a mile from Susie’s suburban home, listened to the heartbreaking dialogue between attacker and victim, and watched as Harvey raises his knife. By page 22, a neighbor’s dog has unearthed Susie’s elbow. These images were too much for Jackson.
Some argue that the horrific acts depicted in this story are what make the narrator’s journey, and that of her family, so extraordinary. The novel becomes a poem of mourning and loss. And by the book’s end, Susie has relinquished the revenge fantasy that drives the plot and succumbed to the “wide, wide heaven.” Justice is almost an afterthought.
To suggest there is a moral reason for excising the onscreen murder of a child, says screenwriting professor Richard Walter of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, is to diminish the importance of drama as an art form. The depravity and barbarism of child murder has, after all, driven plots since the dawn of theater from Medea to Macbeth, he points out.
“To make Lovely Bones without the rape,” said Walter, a fan of the novel, “is like making Titanic and leaving out the iceberg.”
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doughty
I have to tell you, this was a movie I was looking forward to seeing, and I'm going to be really REALLY mad if you just gave away who the killer of the kid is - which sounds like a cliffhanger / surprise - at the beginning of your article.
I hope you're smarter than that - I hope it's info that's given to us upfront. But if the point of the whole film is "who dunit" and 2 hours later - Whoa! it's the neighbor!. I'm gonna be seriously pissed.
newyorkcity
Don't be mad-- the book presents it immediately, and it stands to reason that the movie will do so as well. No surprises revealed here.
lindabrandon
Sweet pea, it's "linchpin."
manticore1223
From merriam webster. Cheers.
Main Entry: linch·pin
Variant(s): also lynch·pin \%u02C8linch-%u02CCpin\
sandyej
Actually, either lynchpin or linchpin is correct , according to the Oxfofrd Dictionary.
debnewyorker
It's appalling that he has stripped the story of it's most critical event. It's censorship, whatever BS rationale Jackson uses. What an absolute coward. It's such a beautiful book. I will not be seeing the movie now. It's dumbing down the entire story. How condescending. Is Sebold OK with it? I'm curious....and sad people won't see the entire story as it was written.
arnesbitt
Nonsense. I read the book, too. Actually seeing the rape or murder happen on film is not necessary. For god's sake, use the same imagination that you used when you read the book.
There is such a thing as leaving some things off-camera. Many directors built their careers on that technique.
debnewyorker
I have the imagination, sweetie. It's for those who didn't read the book that I speak. Sorry you're such a pussy for the harder parts of the story to be shown.
timeflies
Agree with Richard Walter and not just on the basis of literature. The sex obsessed U.S. can't take the complications of reality without hollowing out the core. So, perhaps the all-powerful and mostly male entertainment industry in this country ought finally portray violent acts against children and females as horrific barbarism committed by a seemingly bottomless pit of spineless life losers, instead of refracted fodder to titillate generation after generation of idiot teen boys and so-called adult men.
robertell
exploiting rape of little girls? or was this a documentary? the studio made the movie to make money. It is abut the brutal murder of a little girl...what is wrong with a society that
A: makes a movie like this
B. goes to see the movie.
Depravity is a good sart....
mbgillil
It tells a story. It's an important story to tell, lest we forget that this is a society where young girls do get raped and murdered. Were the movie or book glorifying such an act, that would be wrong. To tell of reality is not wrong - that's what art is made to do.
jeffheather
I loved the book, but I would have zero interest in actually seeing this child's rape, murder, and dismemberment on the big screen.
blazedog
There seems to be separate
The first is not having the rape/murder depicted on screen. I have no issues with that since a verbal description on a book is far different than a film. Film by its very nature is different than words -- the mind's eye is quite different than the camera's eye for most people.
Second is whether the girl being both raped and murdered is critical for plot development. I am not entirely sure why it needed to be excised but then I am not entirely sure whether it would be critical to amp up the terror of the victim and moral repugnance of her rapist/murderer.
Eliminating the adulterous affair -- Without seeing the film, it's difficult to comment as to whether it was done to eliminate moral ambivalence (not an uncommon dumbing down by Hollywood) or whether it was done because films by their nature have to eliminate certain extraneous plot elements when adapting books for the screen.
doucet
As a survivor of a brutal rape which happened a quarter of a century ago, I skipped over that part of the book. It was clear to me that she had been murdered.
I'm the glad ordeal is not been depicted in the movie. We don't need to see it to understand how incredibly evil the act was. A director can use other devices. This is not The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
LosFeliz
As another survivor - I could not wholeheartedly disagree. It speaks volumes that this country is "embarrassed" about rape - an already horrifically under reported crime that possibly up to a quarter of the female population in this country will experience at one point in their lifetime. We still equate it with the shame of the woman and not attacker.
Whether or not it needed to be depicted on screen is a worthwhile debate, however, to excise a mention (why can't you say it?) is pathetic and borderline Victorian. I read Ms. Seebold account of her own rape as well as "Bones" and it was difficult. The complexities and contradictions seemed for lack of a better expression very real to me and power of the family and Susie being able to love again in spite of what happened had an redemptive quality for me.
From the reviews it sounds like just made another version of "What Dreams May Come".
dhutnyak
I hate to distract the debate, but I do believe Kate Winslet killed that woman with a brick or rock in a nylon stocking, not with a hammer.
jow1979
Need I remind the viewing public of 2007's 'Hounddog' with Dakota Fanning? That movie, which involves a rape of a 12 year old girl, sparked general outrage before the movie even came out and the depiction was scant. I see this as a 'damned if you do', 'damned if you don't' situation. If Jackson had actually depicted the rape in some way, I guarantee there would have been groups who would have been up in arms. As a librarian and a voracious reader I do not condone censorship and I don't think that is the case here. I think this a matter of artistic license and decorum. If you want the full experience and the excruciating details, by all means, read the book. Do I think the general public really wants to go the movies and experience the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl? I don't think so. Do I think that the movie runs amok of the book? No. Rarely do I find the movie version of a story more satisfying than the book. I agree with Mr. Jackson here.
GDauthor
Haven't seen this movie but I'm surrounded by friends mourning over the disappointing adaptation. How surprising and absurd that Jackson, who made the brilliant and intensely dark "Heavenly Creatures" would choose to mar an inherently dark novel so that his 13-Year old can watch it! That's what they make the Twilight sagas for. But assuming the author had some say in this, Sebold must also be held accountable for allowing a personal novel to be commercialized and disappointing her fans. But this should not be surprising. Good books rarely translate to good movies. And for this, Anthony Minghella will always be missed for his brilliance in making a good book even better on screen.
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