This is less of a review and more of a rant, but if I were to give a personal opinion, it would be this: Nope, nope, nope.
I have to say, I was wary from the start about how good this film interpretation of the gothic novel would be, and rightly so; it was a very disappointing watch.
Starting with positives, the acting was brilliant in my opinion. Ben Barnes portrayed an effectively mysterious and increasingly-cruel Dorian Gray, and Colin Firth's Lord Henry Wotton was magnificently witty, dark, cynical and sarcastic.
My first peeve though, was that Dorian Gray's hair was very obviously brunette. Was it so hard to find an attractive blonde actor instead, considering throughout the novel Gray is described as having golden hair?
Next, was that Basil seemed much more confident and feisty than he was portrayed in the book. This, I could deal with, however the hyperbolic homoerotic themes seemed unnecessary and far-fetched to me. In the book there are undertones of homosexuality from various characters; at the time the book was written it would've been outrageous to make any explicit homosexual references. The film, on the other hand, seemed to run wild with this theme, along with the addition of plenty of scenes depicting twisted, unconventional sexual activities, such as Gray seducing a young girl upstairs at her own celebratory party, before hiding her under the bed and promptly doing the same to her own mother while she lay, horrified, underneath. Like I said: unnecessary. I felt that scenes like this ruined the transitional chapter in the book and made the storyline far less believable.
Further problems I had with this film included the addition of made up characters like Wotton's daughter, who Gray fell in love with - clearly meant to be the filmmaker's version of Hetty from the book; the changing of powerful parts such as Gray and Vane's romance followed by the removal of Sybil Vane's suicide, and the alteration in how her death is revealed to Gray; and also the way in which Jim Vane died. Two of the biggest issues I had were 1) the way portrait transforms, and 2) how it is destroyed at the end. I loved how, in the book, the changes in the portrait were initially very subtle - a glimmer of cruelty in the eye, or a flicker of evil on the side of the mouth. But, of course, the film felt it necessary to go over-the-top once again and make the portrait first begin to bleed, and next have a maggot crawl from it's eye. I feel that with the aid of camera skills and special effects that written words do not possess, the film could've portrayed the transformation in a much more artistic and effective way. Finally, at the end of the film, we see Lord Henry Wotton discover the portrait, and thus decide to lock Dorian Gray in the room with it and set it on fire, in order to destroy him and the painting. The relationship between the two characters felt wrong here, as in the book Wotton still adores Gray at this point, and does not know about him murdering their friend Basil, which I liked because it remained a secret as to how much of a monster Dorian Gray had really become, unlike in the film. Granted, Gray stabbed the painting while the room burned up, staying true to the novel. However, the painting almost came to life, snarling and leaning out from the canvas. I felt that this added a whole new supernatural element to the story, lessening the psychological one which I adored so much in the book.
I understand that in visual media, artistic license is used to show parts of a story that cannot be communicated without written word, but nonetheless I felt that none of these differences added to the story whatsoever, and rather felt that they weakened the shock, mystery and sinister tones created so fantastically in the novel. I think that they could've been executed in a far more effective way, and without simply showing off special effects skills.
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