Heart of Glass

Armstrong has striven to give moviegoers the gestalt of the book, as she did so marvelously in 1994's Little Women. But film techniques that worked for a classic stymie the transformation of a self-conscious, postmodern novel such as Carey's. After Beth dies in Little Women and we see those keepsakes in her box as sacred heirlooms, they sum up the primal sanctity of the nineteenth-century home. We never think of them as visual similes or metaphors; their meaning bubbles up from the story's dramatic core. In Oscar and Lucinda all we have at the center is a Christmas pudding and Prince Rupert's drop. The movie turns into an overwrought fretwork of fancy images and ideas -- a highbrow notions counter.

When they were collaborating on the screenplay to 1951's The African Queen, writer James Agee told director John Huston that Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn's trip up the river could symbolize the act of love. Huston responded: "Oh Christ, Jim, tell me something I can understand. This isn't like a novel. This is a screenplay. You've got to demonstrate everything. People on the screen [are already] symbols. You can't have symbolism within symbolism." Oscar and Lucinda proves Huston's point all too well. Using a flashy scarlet-streaked color scheme, opulent costumes, and a heavenly-choir soundtrack to cushion weighty matters such as the river journey, Armstrong wants this to be a magic carpet ride into a New South Wales heart of darkness. Instead Oscar and Lucinda is like an Australian lit. or women's studies syllabus tied up in party ribbons.

Oscar and Lucinda.
Directed by Gillian Armstrong. Written by Laura Jones, from Peter Carey's novel. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett.