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Translating Tales of Violent Teens
by Richard Horgan |
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4/16/2008 at 5:59:13 PM |
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The movies have a funny way of sometimes thrusting upon us someone previously unknown, with not one but several samples of their perceived expertise. Such is the case with Australian born screenwriter Emil Stern, the writer behind this Friday’s Uma Thurman-Evan Rachel Wood drama The Life Before Her Eyes and the forthcoming Russell Crowe drama Tenderness, slated for release later this year by Lionsgate.
Both films revolve around the notion of violent teens, and on this – the first anniversary of the horrible Virginia Tech campus massacre – there is no more resonant an issue. If you want to imagine how traumatic and long-lasting the effects of a Columbine or Viriginia Tech are on the survivors, look no further than the older version of the Diana character portrayed by Thurman. And then pray that the new watchfulness on the campuses of U.S. high schools and universities can reduce if not eliminate this kind of madness.
Both aforementioned Stern efforts are adaptations of novels by, respectively, Laura Kasischke and the late Robert Cormier. He has done an excellent job of maintaining the to-and-fro rhythms of Michigan writer Kasischke’s Life and thus helped director Vadim Perelman (The House of Sand and Fog) make a film that expects a high level of audience IQ.
Stern is already firmly entrenched in Hollywood as a go-to novel adaptation guy. So much so that along with helping Gwyneth Paltrow and her producing partner Alison Owen get a handle on Megan Marshall’s period piece The Peabody Sisters, he is going to get the chance to direct one of his other adaptations, that of British enfant terrible Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow. All in all, it’s a meteoric rise for the NYU and Tisch School of Arts graduate.
It’s unlikely too many people are going to check out The Life Before Her Eyes in theaters this weekend, what with Forgetting Sarah Marshall dominating the moviegoer consciousness. But eventually, for the most part on DVD, people are going to catch up to one of the best performances of Uma Thurman’s career.
Never mind that the only other really memorable thing she’s done this decade are the hyper-violent Kill Bill films. Looking past her upcoming Griffin Dunne romantic comedy The Accidental Husband, Thurman’s performance in Life could be the first half of a great mid-career one-two punch, the other being her portrayal of an ex-addict wife in the film version of David Hare’s play The Zinc Bed. Most intriguingly, both she and former husband Ethan Hawke (via last year’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) have now delivered a new kind of raw, vulnerable performance.
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