Lived Experiences

http://www.duke.edu/~sdk2/ep/epexp.html Ondaatje's work had recently come to my attention through a friend of mine. I'd read two of his other books, but had yet to purchase The English Patient. (In retrospect, I very much wish I'd read the novel before I'd seen the film.) But I was nonetheless familiar with the basic ideas and themes of The English Patient, and with Ondaatje's general style, and this fuelled my complete surprise when I saw the first television advertisement for the film. I was actually shocked, if I recall, because I couldn't begin to imagine how an Ondaatje novel would translate to the screen, and, indeed, if such a thing was translatable or deserved to be translated. So I experienced initial reservations of an indignant, academic sort. Yet I was at the same time intrigued and quite curious. Could it be done? How would it be done? Clearly, this is just the sort of speculation that the early publicity was intended to elicit; members of my particular audience segment (in one sense, comprised of people who had a familiarity with the novel or the academic circumstances surrounding it) were supposed to be initially critical, suspicious, or enticed by the implausibility of successfully filming the novel. After the cinematic experience, I certainly echoed this reaction: 'I can't believe they actually filmed that,' I said. I, like Roger Ebert and the host of similarly-persuaded critics, was willing to forgive many of the film's glaring inconsistencies and what I suspected were blatant departures from the text due to the sheer massiveness of the task. In effect, my live reading was constantly affected by the intertextual interplay between what I knew of the novel and what I read into its rendering on the screen. And in the end, I simply reiterated exactly what I'd thought beforehand -- that the film was a miraculous undertaking and worthy of praise regardless of its content, which was exactly the intended effect of all the pre-publicity.

The cinematic experience itself was quite unusual for me, for I had the pleasure of viewing the film with Duke University Ondaatje scholar Jessica Smith. We came into the experience with quite different backgrounds: I had a passing knowledge of Ondaatje's work, had seen several of the films encouraged by the Miramax press release, had seen two commercial television advertisements for the film, and had not yet read the novel. Smith, conversely, had not seen an advertisement (having only heard of the film through word of mouth), had not seen many of the associated films, and was quite well-versed in both Ondaatje's general work and particularly in The English Patient. Our attitudes were clearly marked in the beginning: I was optimistic, looking forward to a very artistic if not fully faithful film; she was pessimistic, scarcely able to believe that someone would have the audacity to attempt a cinematic translation of Ondaatje's complicated work.

Given these circumstances, it becomes clear exactly how intertextuality influences readings. I was much more attuned to popular culture, and to the various pre-film references espoused by all available commercial relay. I was expecting the level of cinematic artistry associated with Three Colors: Blue and the intense drama associated with Schindler's List, with a uniformly dreamlike, other-worldly feel (in the vein of Truly, Madly, Deeply). Smith, on the other hand, did not share the knowledge of these references and was thereby unable to draw upon them. Her only exposure to these films came as a result of their own commercial intertextual relays; i.e. she understood that they were supposed to be highly artistic or dramatic (for the sole reason that someone, somewhere had assured her that they were), but she did not have primary knowledge of them. I, on the other hand, had exactly the same conception of Ondaatje's novel, in that it had been described to me, yet I had not read it. We both used these individual knowledge bases extensively in our reactions to the cinematic experience, and our reactions could not have been more disparate. The scenes that I found moving, Smith found repulsive. The scenes that I found tedious, she found exciting.

There was one moment in the film in particular that demonstrated the extent of our different intertextual awareness. The scene is one of the most famous, occurring at perhaps the midpoint of the film. Kip (Naveen Andrews) has rigged a contraption of ropes and pulleys whereby he can lift Hana (Juliet Binoche) into the dead air of an abandoned chapel space. At this higher level of the chapel are painted beautiful, detailed religious frescoes, untouched by the ravishes of the war. Hana glides to and from in mid-air, supported by Kip's strong arms, the only light in the musty space sparking from a single flare. As the scene drew to its conclusion, I half-turned to Smith and whispered 'This is beautiful.' She looked at me in shock, gasped, and said, 'This is disgusting.'

I was intensely moved by the scene. I thought that the use of space was brilliant, the lighting was spectacular, and the subtext and multiple layers of meaning were thick enough to provide endless hours of deconstructive analysis. The scene for me simply accentuated the high-art nature of the film, in fact exemplified it. Smith's adverse reaction, I later found out, was due to the fact that the scene from the novel is completely different, and has not a semblance of the meanings forced upon it by the film. In the novel, Kip rigs the contraption for a man he just barely met. It is one of the novel's multifarious mysterious, quirky digressions; yet the film not only altered the moment, but forced it to become an emotional peak. For someone familiar with the novel as intimately as Smith, it was an unforgivable offence. The whole film for her was coloured with these instances, yet these same instances were probably for me the most imaginative or creative. This is the manner in which intertextuality functions: it informs individual readings through use of shared or implied knowledge.

After we left the film, we discussed it heatedly. I defended the scenes she hate, while she found the film's most redeeming qualities in the scenes I despised. Overall, Smith rejected the film while I embraced it. The intertexts affecting her reading were far too established and too emotionally rigid to allow her a benevolent interpretation. Conversely, my reading was so heavily influenced by industry intertexts that I seemingly had no choice but to regard the film as successful. A clearer case of the effects of intertextual relay would be difficult to find.

[Previous Section || Next Section]