After wathcing bits and pieces of the movie Smooth Talk in class, I now have the urge to go out and rent it to see how the whole story plays out. I must say, I didn't really enjoy the movie as much as I thought I would. Maybe it was the unsatisfying ending, but it just didn't feel right. The beginning part that we watched strayed from the actual short story, but it was well-done. The last part that we watched, however, seemed to be scripted word for word from the short story. It felt as if the last portion we watched was the whole short-story, and made me wonder what the rest of the movie consisted of. In the movie, Connie was portrayed well. She captured the coyness and innocence of the character in the story. At first, when she was talking to Arnold friend, she appeared to enjoy the attention, leading him on, teasing him, and making it seem like she enjoyed this unknown-man coming to her. After a while, though, the fright kicked in. The scene with Arnold took a long time to play out, and at times I wanted the story to hurry up and finish, but it was effective. As in the book, Arnold had a way of talking and persuading which required no physical force, only effective words.
Recently, I went to the movie The Lovely Bones, and it seemed like a retelling of Connie's story. In the movie, the murder meets his young female victim in a field, and uses his "smooth talk", and appeals to her innocent nature in order to lure her to her death. Both stories involve the snatching of innocence through means of effective and convincing language.
The ending of the movie was dissapointing. In the book, I got a much different impression of what happened. To me, the ending of the book implied that Connie drove with Arnold, and he took her to some bare piece of land where he stole her innocence. Then, maybe it's my dark tendencies, but I got the impression that he killed her and buried her in the same field where he stole her innocence. The movie ended much differently, with Connie and her sister dancing...an almost happy ending that disappointed my perspective on the story. Still, despite this final dissapointment, I think I'll still go rent the movie to see how the entire story plays out.
Lit 110-04: A Final Thought
14 years ago
I don't think that was just your "dark imagination", because I got the same impression. Perhaps we've just been trained to think of things that way, but it must be for a reason. I understood what it was that made Connie climb into the car and drive off with her demon lover, but I didn't understand why she seemed almost happy in the end. Perhaps, like some girls, she was all too eager to lose her innocence. Perhaps she felt no guilt or shame about it, but I don't know how likely that is. She was only 15, too young to understand it all, and yet it seems that she not only understood, but was pleased by what happened. That didn't make much sense to me.
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