Posted on a Thursday. Nice. Essentially me just waffling on about how this shouldn’t have been an American production and roasting Chris Columbus, but also talking about it being a rubbish adaptation too. A bit.
I didn’t exactly have great expectations going into this joint (speaking of Great Expectations, shout out to David Lean’s 1946 version, which remains the strongest GE adaptation almost 70 years on). I heard that Steven Spielberg was involved pretty early on, so it was clearly going to have some decent financial backing. Well, that’s something, but a budget does not a great film make. Not necessarily. Am I a fan of Avatar? No. Am I more a fan of Avengers Endgame? Sure. It won’t be getting anywhere my favourite film list, but it’s good. Anyway, money doesn’t equal quality. I had an ideal cast in my head. Elizabeth: Kristen Scott Thomas. Joyce: Sophie Thompson (y’know, Sheila from The Detectorists. She’s awesome). Ibrahim: Ben Kinglsey (Got that one, whoop! Even though his character was underused and the overall performance was kind of disappointing). Ron: Ray Winstone.
The actual casting choices ended up being pretty beige, albeit quite predictable. Helen Mirren for Elizabeth, Celia Imrie for Joyce, Ben Kingsley for Ibrahim and for Ron…Pierce Brosnan. I know everyone’s gone off about this casting choice a load already, but imma’ go off about it again. Pierce. Brosnan. Is. Not. Ron. There’s nothing about Pierce Brosnan that screams Ron. There’s nothing about Pierce Brosnan that whispers Ron, for that matter. Watching Brosnan go around picketing crowds as a man of the people while his accent travelled in more directions than an apprentice Deliveroo cyclist set loose on the streets of London was a whole new level of cringe. But these casting choices speak more about the overall production than they do about the actors themselves.
And who’s helming the production in that director’s chair? Chris Columbus. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. It’s not the fact that Chris Columbus is American that makes him a shite choice to direct The Thursday Murder Club. It’s more the fact that Columbus is just shite at directing British films. Yes, I know he’s got a lot of love from directing Home Alone and The Goonies. But those are American joints, which he should stick to directing. To paraphrase a long quote from an obscure sketch performed by Stewart Lee, the best and brightest Chris Columbuses should stay in America and make it economically prosperous. Yeah, you’re gonna need to watch the clip on YouTube to get your noggin’ around that one. And I’m not even quoting Lee in the right way, because he’s employing a heavy, heavy dosage of sarcasm in that clip. But in any case, Chris Columbus does indeed need to focus on American films, because he ain’t got a clue about British fare.
But now, a quick tangent where I give some examples of how a director doesn’t need to be born in the native country of the film they’re directing in order to make a damn fine film. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a film set in Britain by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson. The Zone of Interest, a film set in Germany directed by Jonathan Glazer. Blade Runner 2049, a film set in America directed by French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve. Drive, another film set in America directed by Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn. You Were Never Really Here, yet another film set in America, this time made by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay. The list could go on and on. But let’s just zero in on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for a moment to appreciate the simple fact that you don’t need to be British to make a solid gold British film. Heck, you don’t even need to have English as your first language. End of tangent.
The British casting here is infused with a distinctly American lens, particularly when it comes to Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren. What films might American audiences instantly recognise these two from? Bond, perhaps? James Bond, perhaps? Both actors fit into a quintessential ‘British’ brand of acting that Americans will be instantly familiar with. And I get it, on a financial level. You need to attract views by getting familiar faces on the bill. The film is on Netflix, after all. My expectations took a distinct dip when I heard that the whole thing would go straight to streaming. I can’t help but think that Richard Osman would’ve been disappointed, too. If you sign onto a big movie deal for your book, you want people to see it on the big screen, right?
So, back to Chris Columbus. This guy just doesn’t get the feel of the book at all. Not an ounce of it. Cooper’s Chase is turned into a grand mansion (fun fact: the same mansion used in the X-Men films for Xavier’s mutant school) rather than the cosy set-up in the book. It’s a needlessly grandiose setting that looks more like Downtown Abbey, another series which a load of Americans equate with what British folk//gentry/lads/peeps/ are actually like. Scenes are dragged through from bit to bit without much emotional impact, and the narrative, which is both funny, light and serious in Osman’s prose, is rendered hollow and lifeless in Columbus’s lens. But this the same dude who directed the first two Harry Potter films, after all. The two crappiest ones, as much as we might like the films as a whole. This dude can’t do British. Narratives that are full of so much magic and spark just turn to ash when Colombus takes a look at them (yeah, I’ll go with that mid poetic sentence).
If you want a British book adapted, and you want it adapted right, don’t put it in the hands of this fool of a Took.