The screenplay for A Monster Calls was adapted by Patrick Ness from his own novel of
the same name, but is based on a plot thought up, but not written, by the late Siobhan Dowd, another prize winning ‘Young Adult’ author. After Dowd died Patrick Ness was invited to
develop her idea into a novel and then script.
The film A Monster Calls was directed
by the Spanish Director J.A. Bayone (The Impossible and The Others) and stars Liam Neeson,
Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver and the young Lewis MacDougal as
Connor. I urge you to see it. But I also offer a warning.
In the rather beautiful opening credits
water-colours float across the screen.
We will see such images later telling important stories and providing
vital clues to guide us through the psychological and emotional thickets of
this powerful movie. But this is about death and facing the dying
of a beloved.
Twelve year old Connor’s mother has
cancer. He knows this and struggles
with his fear, rage and shame. His
father is remarried and living in America.
His Grandmother seems to be emotionally distant. So he is visited by a Yew Tree Monster who
seems to wreak destruction but also tells ambiguous stories that confuse
Conner. And the Monster also demands that
Connor will eventually tell his own story, the story that terrifies him.
I read the Patrick Ness book in one sitting
and remained determinately dry-eyed, but I knew that the more potent medium of
the movie would not let me get away with that again. It is nearly eleven years since my beloved wife
died but it seems I still have tears to let flow. Anything that helps us take another
faltering step along the grieving road has to be good for us. How
often have I assured the bereaved that the tears we shed can help to heal us,
but warned that unshed tears turn to acid and burn us from the inside. Grief can feel like a monster, but it will
not harm us if we respond to its call and face it, like brave young Connor, and
listen to it.
I love the way today’s
movie makers are able to put literally anything they can imagine onto the
screen, from the kaleidoscopic cityscapes of Doctor Strange and the beguilingly human BFG to the Yew Tree ‘ Monster’ voiced by Neeson in this film. They can do so to thrill and amaze us, and
can also do so to touch our hearts and heal us.
Movies can properly and beneficially move us. Sometimes they address our own personal struggles,
sometimes they are - as Saint Roger Ebert once said - ‘machines to produce empathy.’
Twice in this
film adults are faced with the outrageous behaviour of an emotionally tortured child. Twice he expects to be properly
punished. And twice he is asked ‘What possible good would that do?’ And so are we. The
late Josephine Hart’s novel Damage (filmed in 1992 by Louis Malle with Juliette
Binoche, Jeremy Irons and Miranda Richardson) made the crucial and succinct point that ‘damaged people damage people.’ That was long before we had to come to terms
with the fact that abused people’s behavior so often alienates us from
them, making them –at the least –
unsympathetic witnesses, self-harmers or, too often, abusive themselves.
Empathy is a crucial characteristic of big
brained mammals, and one that needs to
be fostered and fed. Books such
as A
Monster Calls may be hard to read, and movies such as this may be hard to
watch, but if they can help in healing
our own wounds or feed our understanding of the wounds of others they are good
for us. And often rather beautiful. I give thanks for those artists who write such
books and those make such films.
Sigourney Weaver must be pretty busy making
the fifth Alien and three Avatar sequels. She certainly does not need to master an
impeccable English accent again for this role as she did long ago for The Year of Living Dangerously, so she obviously wanted to be in this
film. Felicity Jones is at the top of
her Theory of Everything and Star Wars acclaim and fame, so this
comparatively ‘little film’ must have called to her too. Liam
Neesom can earn squillions making more meretricious Taken style revenge movies, but he also sometimes commits himself
to more redemptive roles such as the recovering-alcoholic cop Matt Scudder in A Walk Among the Tombstones, a brief appearance as God in the BBC’s
wonderful Rev and now this.
As I said earlier, I urge you to see this
film, but do heed my warning.
