A Movie That Desecrates the Book

Seeing as it is one of my top five books of all time and that Anthony Minghella absolutely butchered The English Patient, Ondaatje's masterpiece seemed the obvious winner for my Movie That Desecrates the Book Award, but I happen to be reading a book right now that was more greviously desecrated, so I need to talk about Alan Moore's From Hell instead.

From Hell was butchered by the Hughes Brothers. I liked their first two movies — Menace II Society and Dead Presidents — and I even liked From Hell when I walked out of the theatre. I liked it enough to by a cheap DVD of it and watch it again, but I hadn't read the source material yet. The brilliant Alan Moore scripted / Eddie Campbell pencilled graphic novel was on my radar, but it is a huge beast of a comic, and I was busy in grad school. So I didn't have an opinion of the source material either time I watched it, and from a place of ignorance there is a lot that works in the screen version of From Hell.

Johnny Depp put in his usual, quirky Tim Burton performance (odd that, considering the Hughes Brothers adopted a Burton-lite aesthetic for their film too), Ian Holm was properly creepy as Dr. William Gull, and the paint-by-numbers investigation into the Jack the Ripper slayings was about what we've come to expect from Jack the Ripper flicks. I even enjoyed Heather Graham's terrible performance as Mary Kelly for its campiness (but please take some vocal lessons next time you're playing a streetwalker in Whitechapel, Heather).

On its own, From Hell was a decent movie going experience. But I am reading the graphic novel now, a good five-ten years since last seeing the movie, and even with my memory of the film being dimmed by distance, I am appalled by the adaptation. From Hell should never have been made into a movie. Perhaps an HBO mini-series could have done it justice, but even that is a very long shot. More than any other comic I have seen, it was created for its form. Moore's story cannot translate into a novel, an epic poem, an essay, and certainly not a movie. It cannot be adapted.

I am only on the fifth chapter of the book and not a single killing has occurred. Jack the Ripper (not yet Jack the Ripper but we know he soon will be) has been ordered by the Queen to dispose of four women, and he's just gone to Scotland Yard to inform them that he is about to do just that. Still no killings, though. No mystery about Jack the Ripper's identity. No police investigations. Nothing that a film producer would want to see in his movie. No real action.

What we do have is the groundwork for the murders. The motives are all in place. We have the history of the man who will be the Ripper. We see his pragmatism, his interest in the occult, his encyclopaedic knowledge of Masonry, his misogyny, his knowledge of London, and his opinions about Masonry's conspiratorial role in everything that happens in England. We also see his benevolence in his genuine concern for John Merrick (the Elephant Man), which stands in stark contrast to what we know is coming, and his superiority as a doctor — the profession that has brought him all his success. 

We also have some of the most inspired pencils I've ever seen. They are not beautiful. They are angular, unfinished, ugly pencil scratches (but for a few well placed and perfectly completed charcoals). The lettering is intentionally messy, as though a drunken doctor were writing a fast prescription so he could race off to the golf course. But they are perfectly effective when it comes to conjuring the mood of the piece, the degradation of industrialized London, the hint of murder that's in the fog.

None of these things, neither the actions nor the aesthetics, can be found in the Hughes' movie. The film is bereft of depth, although it pretends to have some when Mr. Depp's character "chases the dragon" — but it is a sad mockery compared to what Alan Moore is doing in his book. I hate to heap anger on the Hughes Brothers, though. Yes they directed the movie, and it is easy to target them as the culprits, but the producers, the comic companies, everyone else attached must share the blame for this terrible blunder in adaptation.

One can understand why Moore is so disgusted with Hollywood. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a travesty. V for Vendetta and Watchmen were valiant efforts that didn't really work out. But From Hell is murder. Hollywood tied Moore to a chair and forced him to watch them murder the children of his mind.

If you love comics you must read From Hell. There really is nothing like it anywhere in existence. Don't bother with the movie. Try and expunge it from your memory if you've seen it, but stay away, far far far away, if you haven't.