THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
[2016, US - English]
When PAULA HAWKINS’ book THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN became a global bestseller that sold more than 15 million copies and heavily compared to the likes of GILLIAN FLYNN’s GONE GIRL, we knew it was a matter of time it gets an adaptation. Director of the 2011 Oscar-nominated period drama THE HELP, TATE TAYLOR decided to take on the challenge two months after Dreamworks Pictures acquired the film rights in May 2014, and indeed it proved to be a complicated adaptation. Unlike GONE GIRL’s film which was written by Flynn herself, apart from several set visits, Hawkins practically left the adaptation in others’ hands. Scriptwriter ERIN CRESSIDA WILSON has to write a mystery tousled within several characters’ minds, from alcoholic Rachel Watson (EMILY BLUNT), to Megan Hipwell (HALEY BENNETT) who is detached from her marriage to Scott (LUKE EVANS) and feeling entrapped in her life as a housewife, and finally we have Anna Watson (REBECCA FERGUSON) who constantly forebodes Rachel’s intentions as she did after all started her family from having an affair with Rachel’s husband, Tom Watson (JUSTIN THEROUX).
Besides having another book to work on, Hawkins also felt that her novel was in capable hands after meeting the forty-seven year old American director. “I was always confident about their handling of it from the early days, when I met Tate…we went for a drink, and immediately when he was talking about his vision for it, I was thinking, ‘He sees the same sort of things in it that I see.’ He wanted it to be very dark from the start, and I think the thing I was most concerned about was that [the filmmakers] would take away the darkness of it,” she shared. Apart from that, audience is brought into the muddled world of Rachel who is a divorcee struggling with alcoholism, constantly doubting her own innocence as she gets caught in a missing person’s investigation.As we know it will always be much more feasible in writing to bring forth the impact of painting Rachel’sblurry perspective and culminating the suspense. Tate opted for several techniques which may have worked against him when it came to winning the hearts of the critics, including fuzzy narratives, creating a somewhat ‘drunken camera’ effect and lots of close ups. Many are pinning the film down for the weak narrative and its unnecessarily slow-boiling build-up for its plot. I felt it was far from a flaw, as it does give audience the claustrophobic and disorientated feel which Rachel’s character is constantly going through. Hawkins herself admitted that it’s quite a task to bring that into the big screens, where she shared “It’s easier to hide things on the page, because people aren’t actually seeing them. It’s easier to obfuscate and give hints of information without giving the full picture. It’s very important when you’re writing a thriller to drip feed information at the right pace, but you have more space to do it in a book - you only have an hour and a half in a movie.”
I won’t go further into the story as it would inevitably enter into spoilers territory. Suffice to say, Blunt delivers a strong performance as the vulnerable Rachel who painstakingly forces her way into an intricate web of characters amidst the mystery of a possible missing person and murder case, and Tate brought Hawkins’ bestselling novel into film which altered several aspects (including introducing a full blown focus on LISA KUDROW’s character which was not in the book) that worked for me. Granted (since people can’t get away from comparing it to acclaimed GONE GIRL), the suspense is not as staggering, I find myself however not agreeing to the loathing reviews going around about this film. Some of the reasons brought up including the impact of changing the setting of the book from London to the suburban Ardsley on Hudson in New York, is kind of baseless as it doesn’t carry any weight at all to the storyline.
Rating: B+
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