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CharlyRating:
Release Date: 19 October, 2004 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: |
Charly Reviews
Interesting example of 1960s camp/kitcsch, however it makes severe departures from the book!
"Charly," a relatively loose adaptation of Daniel Keyes' critically-acclaimed novella Flowers for Algernon, is a 1968 movie that showcases much of that decade's tendency toward the psychadellic and the beatnik, however in doing so it makes several perhaps fatal departures from the book.
I say "fatal" not in the sense that the movie is terrible, because the movie is quite good though slow in places, but fatal in the sense that some important, fundamental elements present in the book are missing from the movie version. This was probably the intent of the director to make the movie more accessible to large audiences, and is evident in that he changed the title of the book to "Charly" for the movie. Some of the more blatant directoral liberties include:
- The relationship between Charlie and Miss Kinnian is depicted as rather wilde and tawdry in the film (with several semi-explicit scenes), where as in the book, Charlie simply develops a romantic fixation on her that is never consumated. Although the director probably felt the need to incorporate a love interest in the movie to keep viewers watching, it seemed rather unnecessary and the low-key approach of the book might have actually been more interesting.
- Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur are a female and a male neurologist respectively in the movie, where as in the novel both are men. While seemingly a minor discrepancy, the book implied that there was a clashing of male egos, especially as the novel showcased Dr. Nemur as feeling pressure and jealousy so as to get more credit for the experiment than Dr. Strauss, a younger man with certain fundamental differences of opinion regarding the whole procedure.
- In the movie Charlie briefly joins -- in an utterly preposterous scene -- a motorcycle gang and engages in an orgy with the female bikers, as solace for his rejection by Miss Kinnian. While this was entertaining on an "oh my, this really is so dumb it's fascinating and fun to watch" level, nothing of the sort occurred in the book, and there are probably better ways to show Charlie's difficulty in adjusting to life as an intellectual genius albeit with the hormonal instability of a sixteen year old.
While "Charly" is still an enjoyable movie, it is a bit boring if you haven't read the book first, and, considering the superior quality of the book's story, the movie seems actually worse than it really is.
Decent movie, great performance by Cliff Robertson
The principal strength of this movie is the acting by Cliff Robertson. This was an exceptionally challenging role, that required a real breadth of acting style to portray the changes that the protagonist went through. The oscar was well deserved. The story moves along well and you feel the pathos of the two main characters. Some of the minor characters are very one-dimensional and not well acted to boot. The movie shows some of the influences of the late sixties when it was produced, but many of the underlying issues such as treatment of the mentally challenged and medical experimentation are still quite current.
The book on which the movie is based, Flowers for Algernon, is a true classic of science fiction and a really memorable book. The movie scriptwriters chose to focus on the relationship between Charlie Gordon and his teacher, and spent less time on the nature of Charlie's intellectual development and what it meant to his life. The book is actually based on an earlier novella that Daniel Keyes wrote that won the Hugo Award. I have always felt that the expansion into novel length did not add anything to the story development and in fact blunted the powerful effect of the novella's roller coaster ride.
In short, I would recommend this movie to anyone who hasn't seen it. I would recommend the book even more strongly.
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