"Wide Sargasso Sea"-The Movie (1992)

It has been a long time since a book has moved me as deeply as Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.    Maybe I lost myself or at least any pretension of objectivity in the beauty of the language.    Imagine you are on a tropical island somewhere, lying where the waves touch the beach, looking out on a lush jungle.  The last thing you really want to do is think.    The more you can give yourself up to the sheer bliss of the prose of Wide Sargasso Sea the more deeply you will experience it. 

Yesterday I was surfing through the channels available on Sky Cable TV here in Manila.   To my great surprise, on The Velvet Channel  the movie set to start was Wide Sargasso Sea based on Jean Rhys's novel.   Of course I had to watch it even though I was worried it would not come close to the book.    Here are the production details of the movie:

"Wide Sargasso Sea" has been rated NC-17 (No one under 17 admitted). The film has complete nudity and sex scenes that are frank without being graphic. Wide Sargasso Sea Directed by John Duigan; screenplay by Jan Sharp, Carole Angier and Mr. Duigan, based on the novel by Jean Rhys; director of photography, Geoff Burton; edited by Anne Goursaud and Jimmy Sandoval; music by Stewart Copeland; production designer, Franckie D; produced by Ms. Sharp; released by Fine Line Features. At Cinema 1, Third Avenue at 60th Street, Manhattan. Running time: 100 minutes. This film is rated NC-17. Antoinette Cosway . . . Karina Lombard Rochester . . . Nathaniel Parker Annette Cosway . . . Rachel Ward Paul Mason . . . Michael York Aunt Cora . . . Martine Beswicke Christophene . . . Claudia Robinson Amelie . . . Rowena King

Of course I very much wanted to see Antoinette on the screen.   She is perfectly  played by Karina Lombard.   Antoinette is not conventionally beautiful.  She is not an English rose.    She is a Jamaican octopus orchid.     We feel her passion for Edward Rochester and believe in her descent into madness.   She may overact a bit in a fight scene but she has to convey great depth of emotion and feeling in  a small time frame and does it well.   Her final moments in the movie may well give you shivers as they did me.

Edward Rochester is played by Nathaniel Parker.

The movie does completely play to the Jean Rhys interpretation of Edward Rochester as a colonial master who cannot understand his wife any more than he can relate to the freed slaves on the island as full human beings.   

There are, of course, things left out of the movie.   The brother of Antoinette is very well played by Michael York.   Edward Rochester is shocked to his depths by the fact that the mother of his wife's brother was owned by her father.   This does not stop Edward from treating women of African descent as if they were his property to do with as he likes.   The version of the movie I saw has about 2 minutes removed from it due to censorship of cable TV in the Philippines.    I watched the movie twice and I will, I hope, see it a few more times.   The Velvet network tends to repeats movies over and over!

Here is a link to the movie trailer.

I wish Jean Rhys could have seen this movie.   I am not sure if she would have liked it or not but I wish she could have gotten some money from it.    There are some very interesting and intelligent comments on my blog left by those who felt Jean Rhys was unjust to Rochester.   I read Jane Eyre for the first time about ten days after reading Wide Sargasso Sea.   I accept that maybe I was so mesmerized by the beauty of Jean Rhys's language that I may have given an overly anti-colonial reading of Rochester.   Whether Jean Rhys got Rochester right really does not affect the artistic merit of either work but Jane Eyre is much more than simply a great Victorian novel.   It is a cultural treasure of huge import and value so that makes it worth considering if Jean Rhys got it right.   I am still inclined to say, with some qualifiers of course, that she did.   I will reread Wide Sargasso Sea soon and will reread Jane Eyre after I read all the other Bronte novels I have not yet read.   You will understand this movie if you know the basic plot of Jane Eyre.   The scenery is lush and beautiful.    Some of the dialogue in the movie is just as written, which was so wonderful to hear it spoken.   I liked this movie a lot.



I am including this review for

The All About the Brontes Challenge and
The Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge

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