Director: Lone Scherfig
Cast: Jim Sturgess, Anne Hathaway, Rafe Spall, Patricia Clarkson
Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 108 minutes
Synopsis: ONE DAY tells the story of Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and Emma (Anne Hathaway), two people from very different walks of who become close, and indeed start a lifelong friendship at their graduation party on July 15th, 1988. The film spans the next twenty years and we catch up with the two on the same ‘one day’ in each consecutive year. They were always destined to be together…. but life got in the way… as the tag line goes.
My relationship with David Nicholls’ bestselling novel started as I journeyed through London on the tube earlier on this year. Despite it being on bookshelves since 2009, it was not until this time that I first noticed it… and if you live or work in London and travel on the tube, you will know of the book ONE DAY, as at least one person in every carriage has it firmly planted between their mitts. Every year I go on a holiday, and during that holiday I will usually manage to read three books. One a Hollywood satire, another a biography and the other a work of fiction. This year I went to Greece and my choice for the fictional category was One Day ( I also read a Johnny Depp biography and a factual drama about ancient Rome). The problem that you will encounter with the following review is that it contains very heavy spoilers, as I really find it difficult to not to mention key plot points in order to get my opinion regarding the film version across, so if you haven’t read the book, skip a paragraph or two, although I promise not to reveal what has commonly been referred to as ‘that bit’ towards the the end of the novel.
So, in terms of the book to set you up with an idea as to whether I liked it or not, the answer is yes, I did very much. I love the premise, and I love the slow building relationship between the two central characters, Dexter and Emma. I love the way that we like and dislike both of the characters at different points in the book, and absolutely fall in love with both of them in others. I like the set-up, and I fully appreciated the way in which the novellist David Nicholls structured the plot and made it work with us only catching up with the two central characters every 12 months. In fact, I remember reading the book knowing that Nicholls had adapted it into a screenplay and thought to myself just how difficult it was going to be. I always judge how good a book, or even a TV series for example in just how long it takes me to read/ watch it. At the moment I am watching the back log of BREAKING BAD episodes, and lovei t so much that I have managed to knock out three series in as many weeks. The novel, One Day, I finished in about that amount of time (one day, as opposed to three weeks), so yes, I loved it.
Onto the film… okay so here you need to be aware of a few minor spoilers. I’m pleased to say that the set up and structure is exactly the same, and every single one of those twenty years are covered during the movie. Some years are one scene long (1997 and 1998 are pretty much skipped altogether) or a short montage, and others play out in ten to fifteen minute chunks. There is a funny little graphic in the bottom of the screen in each year that the action is taking place, and its very easy to follow (Hollywood doesn;t like you to think). There’s also music cues to take in too which also give you an idea of the time with everything from Del Amitri’s Roll To Me, through Ronan Keating’s Life Is A Rollercoaster to Robbie Williams’ Angels (sung in a not very funny karaoke segment). So here’s my first issue. A lot of the book is missing. I understand the fact that Nicholls had to reduce, but there are a lot of key sequences in the book left out of his adaptation.
Here come the spoilers. Dexter goes to India, but we do not see him there. We don’t see him sat in the shadows of the Taj Mahal drunkenly penning a love letter to Emma. A holiday to the Greek islands is substituted for France (probably due to budgetary issues) and an affair between one of the characters and a headmaster is absent (in fact, the headmaster is not in the film at all). Now, I felt that the extraction of this scene in particular was a very major issue as this makes us slightly dislike the character that is having it, but we understand it at the same time. We also don’t see Emma’s humiliation at the publishing company which preceeded her success as a novelist, and we certainly do not see a lot of Dexter’s fall from grace into alcoholism and drug abuse which is covered so well, and extremely darkly in the book. So, it seems that Nicholls was really going for that 12A rating with his script, and he got it, but I believe that we did not see either of the characters go to the really dark places that they went in the book. The film moves too quickly, as expected really. How on Earth can you fit a 450+ page book into just under two hours? You can’t? How can we be expected to feel as much for Sturgess and Hathaway in the movie as we did for the characters of Emma and Dexter in the book? Well, we can’t as there is simply not enough time. I read some critic on Twitter today saying that the book shouild have been turned into a TV mini series rather than a film. I agree. So many parts of the film move so quickly we simply struggle to bond with either character, something that we need to do, especially knowing that we are heading for ‘that bit,’ the bit that relies on us bonding with them so much. I will not reveal ‘that bit,’ but I will say that if I had not known what was going to happen, I’m sure I would have been pretty shaken by what Lone Sherfig put on the screen. However, I did, so for me personally it did not impact me as much as ‘that bit’ did in the book. I wept so much that I had to dive into the pool to hide my tears. Many a man that has read the book that I know has done the same.
Okay, so spoilers pretty much over. What did I like? Well, Patricia Clarkson and indeed Rafe Spall’s performances are perfect, and they are both expertly casted in the roles of Dexter’s mother and Emma’s first boyfriend Ian. Jim Sturgess does well as Dexter, and given a bit more to work with, could have been the role that made him. Hathaway was good as Emma, and to be honest her role is the difficult one to imagine any actress doing but her. Please, her accent. Is it northern? Cockney? American? Dutch? In fact, at varying points in the movie its all of these, and I really struggled with it. Why did they just not give her an plain English accent? We know for a fact that she can nail that and she’s almost laughable doing what she’s doing in this movie.
So that’s what I feel looking at the film from a fan of the book’s point of view. Trying to look at it from a filmgoers point of view? Well, obviously I don’t have the luxury of going into the thing having not read the book, but looking at it objectively, it’s actually a very decent romantic comedy, that in itself is actually quite enjpyable to watch. It is touching. It is very uniquely structured and I walked out of it not hating it at all. Lone Scherfig has a fine pedigree with the superb AN EDUCATION, and this is a decent movie to follow that up with. Book to movie adaptations are always hard, and last year I felt similarly to Peter Jackson’s screen version of THE LOVELY BONES. As a stand alone movie it’s okay, but the trouble is we are comparing it to such wonderful source material. ONE DAY is about the best adaptation that could have been made of the novel given the running time, I just wish that they had gone just that little bit darker and try to steer clear of the fluffy rom-com that it almost is.
Rating :
