Sunday 18 September 2011

'One Day' - The film


I finally got round to seeing the film last week, and actually I rather enjoyed it. I thought from the trailers that it looked good, but you never can tell. I had no problem with the casting as I already knew who was playing the two main characters before reading and so only ever really imagined them. I know that Anne Hathaway got a lot of stick for her attempts at a Yorkshire accents, which to be honest, I find somewhat unfair. Yes it was not there the whole time but it was a perfectly acceptable attempt. It may have been better had it been more consistent, but then again the character did not live in Yorkshire for pretty much any of the twenty year period covered so most likely the accent would not have stuck anyway.

The script was good (am I right in thinking that David Nicholls also wrote this, which would explain a lot!), some sections being almost identical to the book. It’s quite a feat to fit a book that covers twenty years, one day a year, into a film that is comprehensible and not ridiculously long, but I felt it was well done. They skipped over some years, and some events were omitted entirely but overall the important scenes were there, and done in a fashion faithful to the novel.

The complex relationship between the two characters was portrayed well, although some of the details which made Dexter seem less pleasant; his nonchalant treatment of Emma throughout most of the story, his endless string of girlfriends, his problems with drugs and alcohol, were less apparent within the film, but nonetheless present. As is often the case I found parts almost more moving than when reading the book purely because you know what’s coming and want to change it in some way. As with the novel, there were some genuinely humorous scenes, as well as others deeply moving. Overall a faithful adaptation, and one that I think fans of the book are quite safe watching.

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