Notes from Underground (Gary Walkow, 1995)

[cdnchris]

I just happened to be looking at Jon Favreau's filmography yesterday and noticed this title. I didn't even know that there was an adaptation of this book (not counting films like Taxi Driver and their like, which carry influences.)

I'm actually now curious because it sounds like a straight adaptation, which I thought would have been near impossible since the book is just the narrator's ramblings. Even the sections about the soldier, hooker and his "friends" would be hard to put on screen. I'm curious if anybody here has actually seen this. I like Czerny and think he'd be good in the narrator role (he can play unlikeable characters well) but it's not just him sitting there for 90-minutes talking about how wicked he wants to be, is it?

[blindside8zao]

is this the one that had ads all over fyodordostoevsky.com? In any case, a lot would probably have to be added to the original story to make this cinematic at all, unless the narrative second half is really drawn out.

Actually, I really can't think of any reason for adapting this to film. The heart and meat of this work is so theoretical the only thing that would work is just taking the character out of the book and writing a new screenplay based on his ideas. The character of the underground man has been disseminated throughout culture enough for this to really be warranted.

[Person]

A negative review and a positive review of the film. Both are of the DVD.

It's a bloody expensive DVD, though. CD Universe has it for $29.

The "Underground Man" archetype appears, in various degrees of intensity, in a few films: The Narrator/Tyler Durden in Fight Club; Yossarian in Catch-22 (1970). And as a precedent, I have always seen Timon of Athens, especially the 1981 BBC film by Jonathan Miller with Jonathan Pryce in the lead as being worth considering.

[Doctor Sunshine]

I borrowed this from the library a few years ago and thankfully I remember very little of it. I know that I hated it. Seth Green makes an annoying cameo as the neighbour. It was a cheapo indie flick. And the DVD cover should probably be in our "worst ever" thread.

[John Cope]

Hate to disagree with the Doctor's diagnosis but I fear that I must. It's a better film than you're giving it credit for. Admittedly, the updating is hit or miss in terms of its overall effect and Seth Green's appearance is jarring and unwelcome but beside that I give it props for a concentrated effort at the very least, which is more than I expected. Now, take all this with a grain of salt as I haven't read the book and I'm sure those of you who have will view this entire experiment as a disaster. Also, I can't imagine returning to it as I felt that I got it quite well enough the first time. If that's some indication of a lack of nuance than so be it.

That being said, I really can't imagine anyone under any other circumstances giving a more refined, committed performance in the central part than Henry Czerny. Here's another case of a fine actor who appears to have been relegated to bit, supporting roles in the Hollywood pictures he's been in. Canada has been more generous toward its native son and Czerny has had some great parts in films like Patricia Rozema's When Night is Falling and, of course, John N. Smith's absolutely masterful The Boys of St. Vincent.

[cdnchris]

Got around to watching this and am pretty much "meh" on it. I thought Czerny was pretty good, and actually liked Favreau as well, but it really simplified the character, as well the incidents with his friends and the prostitute (they skip his thing with wanting to bump into the officer) lack the punch they should have had. I remember reading the book and really reacting to the last bit where he gives the prostitute the money (which she throws away) but the movie didn't really seem to capture that moment at all. It's almost a throwaway moment. I also found it odd that they changed a lot of his "notes" in wording, trying to make it more modern I can only assume, but then there's the one sequence where his buddies talk about taking Favreau's character out to dinner, and I swear the dialogue rang more from the era in the book (or how the translations present it,) rather than today, which made it awkward. It also really felt like a cheap indie film. All I could recommend it for was Czerny and not much else.