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I first saw the novel in Elaine's room when I was in Vancouver last November. The book she had was in hardcover and didn't have the movie poster in the front, but being the Elizabethan fanatic that I am, I went to Chapters first chance I had and got a copy -- the paperback copy that had Natalie Portman (one of my favorite actresses, after Julia Roberts, level with Reese Witherspoon), Scarlett Johanssen and Eric Bana on the cover and made me impatient for the movie before I even read the book. I kept the novel beside my bed and could not tire of reading it, because fictional as the major (and lustful! XD) part of it may be, it was finally clear to me why there had been such a complicatedness of fighting for heirdom in that line of the Tudor monarchy.
I've forgotten why I came to be so interested in that part of British history, and that was even before I came back from the States. In our textbooks, there was a page at most on how Henry VIII turned against the Roman Church and established his own religion -- and all just to divorce his wives! -- but I had gone to the city library afterwards and poured over books on Queen Elizabeth I as if I were doing a term project. I had been intrigued by not just the heir's staggering road to queenhood but also her mother's extraordinary ambition that eventually lead to her going down in history as the first beheaded queen of England, which was the foundation for "The Other Boleyn Girl."
I went and saw the media screening last Tuesday, and was, truthfully, disappointed, as is usually the case with adapted screenplays ("The Kite Runner" in exception). The local box office this weekend and online discussion boards have applauded the movie, but in my opinion, the entire story was adapted in a way worse than the Harry Potter movies although I knew that to be loyal to the original script would have produced a 5-hour long film, but not even the impressive performance of Natalie Portman as the evil yet sympathy-drawing Anne Boleyn could save the cheesy ending which caused me to dislocate my jaw. @@ They always say that a picture speaks for a thousand words, but I guess the intensity that could be built up in a 300-page novel leaked out when transformed into a 110-minute motion picture.
The mechanism of the story was drawn on ambition and lust but the movie delivered neither. Mary played by Scarlett Johanssen was too smart, Eric Bana's Henry too driven than driving (he's the king of England, for God's sake!), Anne suddenly turned virtuous towards the end (example: when she gave birth to Elizabeth she ought to have turned away from the baby and said coldly: "A girl? What good is a girl to us?", but in the movie she cried and doted on the baby like any mother, which was touching but should not have been), the Howard family too kind when they were supposed to have nothing in their minds but ambition. The portrayal of my favorite character--Mary and Anne's brother George--was too downplayed because the film was practically another story which just wore the same name as the novel. Cocky, dashing, reckless and misanthropic, he was the perfect courtier yet the imperfect man who paid a high price for his rebel to the life he did not choose to live, but the movie just made him a joker who had a few laughable facial expressions -_-
I don't think there is a Chinese version of the novel yet (I'll totally translate it if I can find out which publisher it is!), but if you can still concentrate on English fiction, GO READ IT. The movie is good enough for the general public, but the novel is far more promising--not to mention the steamy sex scenes that belong in romance novels but yet are surprisingly classy XD
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