MovieChat Forums > The Razor's Edge (1984) Discussion > The original is the novel ...

The original is the novel ...

posted 15 years ago by PhilPacker
6 replies | jump to latest

Man ... doesn't anybody read anymore? The original is the novel and this movie is a ignorant interpretation of someone who thinks they "get it" but is so far off the mark that they don't realize they are shaming the original work.

As a stand alone movie, this is okay. But to say that it is based on the novel TEH RAZOR'S EDGE is a joke.

This movie actually changes the character of Larry so much that it becomes a mockery of the post-World War I "Lost Generation" that writers like Maugham and T.S. Eliot represented.

Instead of defining the "Hollow Men" this movie simply is hollow. If you get it, you get it, if you don't, you probably think this is a masterpiece.

[–] ragabonds 15 years ago

I couldn't agree more. This movie doesn't do justice to the book.

[–] metalblaster 15 years ago

I rather doubt any movie could do real justice to the book. Most movies based on books cant hold water to the source material because it is merely impossible to fit that much detail into two hours of film.

That being said, In my opinion, (I read the book first and watched the movie afterwards) I still think this is a solid film with solid acting and great writing. It is one of the few movies based on a book, that I can think of that doesn't try to be the book its based on; rather it uses the ideas presented in the book as foot-holds to produce its own themes and ideas.

As a contrast, go look at the mockery the studio's have made of such simple books as the Harry Potter series, those films feel like chopped up episodes with large pieces missing. (And no I am not trying to compare J.K Rowling to W. Somerset Maugham) I just believe a literal translation of a book as complex as "The Razor's Edge" would be simply unwatchable, hell if some one tried to make a movie out of Vladimir Nabokov's "Bend Sinister", a mere 200 or so pages, It would probably come out as a humorless piece of schizophrenic film. Even making a Kafka short story would be a tragedy of cinema.

The main point I'm trying to get across is to not judge this movie solely because its not the book, but rather judge it on its own merits and qualities; you might find something you really enjoy watching.

[–] invoking_janis 14 years ago

Well said.

[–] 14 years ago

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[–] tergenev 14 years ago

I disagree. I've read the novel. I saw the movie. I prefer the film, though I liked them both a great deal.

The themes of the novel are there, but the movie chooses to focus on the themes through Larry's story rather than through Uncle Elliot's. The novel focuses most of the time telling Elliot Templeton's life, with this strange bird Larry floating in and out of the scene from time to time. They are both characters on journeys seeking meaning. They both find what they need to find at the end, and it isn't what they set out to find in the beginning.

The reason I love this story, no matter which way it's told, is that it fundamentally understands reality in a way that the current rendition ('Eat, Pray, Love') does not. Life is not always going to be pretty, and certainly not just because you have some sort of higher 'mission' to find true meaning in your life. The bad people in A Razor's Edge end up being so much more reprehensible than those in Eat, Pray, Love, and yet you end up hating the lead character in the latter film oh so much more for being so banal. (Isabel is one of the truly evil creatures in literature. Liz is just a thinly veiled version of the author, who naturally can't see that she's vile.)

The themes of the two stories?

The Razor's Edge, both versions, is truly a student of existential philosophy, "The only meaning in life is the experience you have in living it."

Eat, Pray, Love, is a child of excess whose only message seems to be, "It doesn't matter who you hurt along the way as long as you feel good in the end."

[–] 14 years ago

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