This is a bit of departure for me. I’ve decided to try writing short reviews of books, films, exhibitions, etc. This is really for me, to help me to engage more critically with them by articulating my thoughts, but if any of you find these interesting I’d love to hear from you. I’m going to review couple of things at a time, in this journal I will be covering A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and the film Return to Silent Hill.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
This was my first ever Dickens novel, and it was a fascinating experience to finally read an author who’s works I have absorbed through cultural osmosis my whole life. The work is bookended by one of the most famous openings in English literature and one of the most famous endings:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”

“It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done”

Despite this I knew almost nothing about the plot going in. The story begins in 1775, with the agent of a banking house, Jarvis Lorry, travelling to Paris, repeating the phrase ‘recalled to life’. We soon discover that this refers to Dr Manette, finally released from 18 years of false imprisonment in the infamous Bastille. We then follow Jarvis, Manette, his daughter and others through the years to 1793 and the chaos of the French Revolution and The Terror.

With that background, to keep spoilers to a minimum I shall move on to my thoughts.

My reaction to the novel was very mixed. In terms of strengths, Dickens is very good at setting a scene, the squalor of pre-revolutionary Paris and the terror of being swept up in a revolution were very well conveyed, and the last third really swept me along. There was also a definite moral force in his depiction of both the oppression of the ancien regime of pre-revolutionary France and the madness of the revolutionary backlash.

On the other paw, the first two thirds or so dragged for me, a lot of the characters felt very thin, almost one dimensional, and there were points where it felt like it bordered on melodrama. It relied heavily on a sequence of coincidences that strained credulity, and while it didn’t quite tip over the edge into the ridiculous this was mainly due to the rapid acceleration of the action in the final section, which allowed me to glide over these plot contrivances provided I didn’t stop to think about them.

Having read up on Dickens after reading the novel I came across these quotes on Wikipedia: Virginia Woolf maintained that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks". T. S. Eliot wrote that Dickens "excelled in character; in the creation of characters of greater intensity than human beings".

While they are clearly a lot more positive in their assessment of Dickens than I am, I think these help bring my thoughts into focus. A lot of his characters are like caricatures. Vivid and memorable, but also exaggerated and unnatural, and this made it very difficult for me to engage with them.

Despite this, the power of the scenes he conjures, the thrilling pace of the closing chapters with their growing sense of dread as the protagonists are caught in the madness of The Terror and the subtly of some of the characters mean that while I don’t think I’ll be rushing to read another of his novels in the near future it was still a rewarding read.

Return to Silent Hill
Christophe Gans has indeed returned us to Silent Hill, 20 years after his last visit and 25 years after Silent Hill 2, the game on which this film is loosely based.

For those who haven’t played the game or watched the film, the story follows James Sunderland, who has been summoned to the eponymous town of Silent Hill by a letter from his wife, who has been dead for three years. As he enters the town he finds in wreathed in fog/smoke, changed in uncanny ways and increasingly dangerous, and so we follow him in a journey ever inwards and downward into the darkness of loss, regret and trauma. If you haven’t played the game I encourage you from the bottom of my heart to do so.

Having laid out that background, onwards to the review.

Given the time and effort that has gone into bringing this film to theatres this is clearly the work of someone who loves the franchise. Sadly, that love is not matched by his understanding, and so the film falls far short of the game on which it is based. However, perhaps controversially I feel the score of 17% on Rotten Tomatoes at time of writing is somewhat unfair.

To address this properly I need to break this into a spoiler free section, and then one that covers the specifics of the plot.

On its own terms as a film, it was competent. The cinematography was fine, probably at its strongest when faithfully replicating the game. The whole experience was elevated by the inclusion of the music from the original game by Akira Yamaoka, an excellent decision. Overall though as a horror film it was fairly pedestrian, not that scary, but I did like the constant ambiguity regarding the the reality of what James is experiencing. I would say it is worth watching if you have no intention of playing the game and have some time to kill, but if you can you should play the game instead.

***Spoliers***
It is in comparison to the game that this film really suffers. Perhaps that was inevitable when trying to squeeze 16-18 or so hours of arguably the best horror film ever made into a 1 hour 46 minute run time, but some creative decisions definitely contributed to the lacklustre experience.

To start, I will say I didn’t mind the ‘time loop, starting it over again to do it right’ ending, even though this is quite a departure from the game. Personally I favour the leave ending, as a depressive who is constantly second guessing my own intentions the story of someone grappling with his own demons to eventually find peace is far more rewarding than essentially a suicide with extra steps, and transmutes all the ugliness, fear and sadness of the game into an experience of poignant beauty. “If that were true, why do you look so sad?” breaks me every time, so I didn’t mind Mary and James finally having a happy ending, and if the film was just going to be a retread of the game then what would have been the point?

That said, there were two elements I think fatally weakened the narrative. The first was the cult subplot. For me the game was never about a cult, or really the supernatural at all except as a way to symbolically explore the James’s mental state, so all this did was eat up time that could have been used to explore the themes of loss and guilt.

The second was the Mary Angela Laura reveal. I didn’t hate this as a concept, but it was poorly handled. Why was Laura a child and what was with the creepy doll baby? They could have explored their hopes for a child. If the other people in Silent Hill are manifestations of aspects of Mary, who is Eddie, an aspect of James or just a random guy? It could have been an interesting way to explore the aspects different layers of James’s feelings about Mary, if it had been fully fleshed out and given room to breath, as it was it ended up feeling like a weaker Shyamalan twist.

In summary then, if you have played the game then I suspect you will be disappointed. I would encourage you to come to it with a degree of charity and accept it as it’s own piece of work separate from the game, but don’t go on expecting a faithful adaptation of the game.