Hollywood likes to adapt books and make them into films. Sometimes, it's a good idea to take a book and change it for the big screen, but sometimes, it's a travesty, especially when a book is good enough not to warrant a radical change.
I recently caught an early screening of Bee Season which was shown at the Times London Film Festival.
The book, by Myla Goldberg was a big hit a few years back. It's about a young Jewish girl who constantly wins Spelling Bee championships. As her father, a synagogue cantor begins to take notice, he starts to neglect the rest of the family. His son casts doubts over his religion while, his lawyer wife struggles with her obsession to steal things as a way to make amends for her past.
The books touches Jewish mysticism with her father teaching aspects of kabbalah. At least, that's the plot in the book.
The film is a somewhat distorted version of this. The father is still a father, but he's played by Richard Gere as a University Professor while the mother is no longer a lawyer, she wasn't even born Jewish but converted. Only the two children seem to remain the same. At least the directors managed to cast a girl as a girl and a boy as a boy.
To be told that the mother converted to Judaism from Catholicism would be interesting if there was a story plot to it? As it is, it is simply mentioned in passing to make it totally meaningless and adds no value to the storyline. Why mention it, is it is not developed. If the mother character was Jewish in the book, then it should stay in the film.
Nor did it seem necessary to change Richard Gere's character from a cantor to a professor. Surely, the directors would have seen Gere's singing ability in Chicago? Why the need to change him into a somewhat drab and characterless professor. There was nothing warm or emotive about the character. it was sterile and clinical.
If the character was a cantor, then leave it like that. There was no need to change it.
By changing the characters, scriptwriter Naomi Foner Gyllenhall has done a real disservice to the author Myla Goldberg.
She has completely changed the structure of the story, introduced elements that verge on the drab and ludicrous and made a mockery of something that had potential to be realised.
The two directors, Scott McGhee and David Siegel should be ashamed of themselves. Maybe they didn't have much influence over the already written script? But any film director could see that the screenplay wasn't in the best interests of the book.
Jewish characters on the big screen don't always get good representation but between the directors and screenwriter, a new level in poor quality representation of Jews has been reached.
Having screwed around with the story, they might as well have changed all the characters and set it on the planet Mars. Maybe then, it would have worked better.
As it stands, Bee Season rates as one of the most disappointing Jewish interest films in recent years.
A constant theme of the film is Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, just a shame that those involved in making the film, didn't practice this theme. Maybe then, we wouldn't have had to endure this tragic piece of celluloid that adds no real value to Jewish filmmaking.
