The Age of Innocence

At wine book club tonight, our meeting was a multimedia extravaganza. After finishing our bottle of wine discussion on the book, we watched the movie adaptation. It's pretty rare that I get to watch a movie when the book is so fresh on my mind.

Well, of course I mentally catalogued all of the differences between the book and the movie. They left out a few minor characters (most notably Medora Manson and Mr. Welland) and changed a few names (Dallas became Theodore in one instance and Townsend in another, and two different Fannys became Annies), but there were only two major ideas that were left out. I mention both in my review of the book--the first was May Archer's unspoken monologue, the second was Dallas Archer's observation about the nature of communication in his parents' generation. But overall, the movie was very faithful to the book and was an excellent adaptation.

One thing that bothered me a little bit about the movie was the narrator. First of all, that there was one. It was a little awkward. However, the movie would have had to leave out so much without that device. Second of all, the narrator was an older-sounding woman who was never introduced. Who the heck was she, and how did she know all this stuff she was telling us? This was especially odd since the entire book was written from Newland Archer's point of view. It would have made much more sense to me if he had been the narrator.

Not surprisingly, I found the book better than the movie, although the movie was also quite good. If you have to choose between the two, I say read the book. If you can only spare two hours and nineteen minutes, the movie will do.