Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

And I thought the short story that this movie was based on was boring...

Here we have the same plot as the short story, plus an additional hour of the main character, Jackson Fentry, and his daily life, plus the relationship that he builds with homely Sarah (or "Sayrah", as he puts it.) The climax comes when the Sarah's "kin" comes to take away the boy, JacksonAndLongstreet Fentry.

The acting is, how should I put this, not up to par with what was being produced at the time. Robert Duvall, as Jackson Fentry, has said that this was his favorite role. Well, it may have been his favorite, but it certainly wasn't the best. The Deep Southern accent is so over-the-top, so over done, so overly, well, Southern, that I couldn't take anything in this flick seriously. Now if the voices that actors utilize in a film turn you off to it, this isn't good. The actors tried their damnedest to pull it off, I could tell. However, they failed. In my opinion that is...

The music, when here was any, didn't seem to fit. Sure it was southern, but why substitute quality for substance? A simple guitar would have sufficed instead of "Dueling Banjos Redux". The film could also have done with music in the dull middle bits of the film to at least give it something to pay attention to. Speaking of which, what happened to the narration? The beginning and end are rife with it, but that dastardly middle has nothing. No hint of it.

At least this version explains the title. Experiencing the hard life, day in, day out. "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow."

Tomorrow

Wow. How very... dull.

This may sound harsh, but I think the best way to describe William Faulkner's "Tomorrow" is that it is the lovechild of "Judge Judy" and "Beverly Hillbillies". Granted, that is a very immature way of putting it, but give me a break.

To summarize, it is sort of a courtroom drama concerning a young lass whose husband gets her pregnant and scrams. A local farmer feels pity on her and takes her in. She dies soon after childbirth, and he takes care of the child, whom he raises. The kid grows up, gets in trouble, and here we have "Tomorrow". Not very complex, is it?

This is one of the most boring stories I have ever set eyeballs to. Again, I am being harsh I think, but William Faulkner came up with better, I'm sure. I haven't read anything else of his (see also Ernest Hemingway), but I am positive he wrote something a bit more engaging.

"Tomorrow". What's in a name? For this tale, apparently nothing. This is perhaps the most arbitrary title for a story I have ever seen. I can see no reason to call the it thus, though I see no reason not to. Maybe William Faulkner thought "Huh. I guess I'll need to write a better story tomorrow."

Memento Mori: Wait, what was I talking about?

Memento Mori. Wow. What a story. THIS is what a short story is supposed to be: compact, yet fulfilling, like an Irish car bomb (the drink, not the IRA specialty). This is what I had hoped “The Killers” would end up; a well-written story that, most importantly, has an intelligible plot that isn’t based on five-word sentences of dialogue.

This is a work of art, and I see why the author’s brother made it into a movie. The suspense in it is incredible, and the plot is intense. It had me sucked into its various little twists and turns from the very beginning. A labyrinth! That is what I would compare “Memento” to. You turn this way and that, usually needing to retrace your steps, end up at the beginning to put it one way. In the end you reach the labyrinth’s core, yet you still do not know what awaits you.

I love the passage of time in this story, or the lack thereof perhaps. The protagonist seems to have been there for perhaps months or even years. But in his and the reader’s point of view no time at all has passed. The deadly attack happened just yesterday perhaps.

I love the internal struggle of the protagonist. I hate to have to try to find “deeper meanings” and “deeper truths” that people insist that all stories have. When I have to find the alleged wisdom, I find my answer is artificial, because it is. It’s a lie. I found no deeper insight in to my psyche or anyone else’s mental faculties for that matter. This story gives no insight into myself. It does, however, give me exactly what I want in a story such as this: this is a riddle to be solved. If I have to dig deep and solve the riddle of this story, then I love it, I love the challenge. Thus, to be able to sit down and watch someone else try to dig deep is infinitely more enjoyable than to try to sift through philological and philosophical rubbish to find a meaning for myself.

And that's my two cents on a priceless story.

It Is a Good Day to Die: "The Killers" and Heroic Fatalism

The essay entitled “Hemingway’s ‘Killers’ and Heroic Fatalism: From Page to Screen” would be a good essay concerning perhaps plot outlines of film adaptations of “The Killers”, but not on the topic of heroic fatalism.
The essay starts out with a definition of heroic fatalism, which is that the hero of the tale accepts what is going to happen to him, even if it means death. All well and good. Then the author of the piece goes on to write a short paragraph on the character Ole Andreson and the heroic fatalism he represents. And that just about wraps up the essay as concerns heroic fatalism. The author goes on to give us tidbits of trivia on the making of the two film adaptations, Hemingway’s responses to them, the directors involved, their back stories, the Soviet Union’s view of the first adaptation… alas, no heroic fatalism to be found apart from a snippet here and a morsel there concerning the characters of the films.
Taking into account that “Hemingway’s ‘The Killers’ and Heroic Fatalism” has little to do, in my opinion, on heroic fatalism, then I would have to say that if I happened to be interested in film adaptations of “Killers” then I would give this essay the thumbs up. Ditto if I were interested in plot summaries of the aforementioned adaptations. But if I were interested in heroic fatalism in “The Killers” I would have to go somewhere else for my information rather than use this essay as I find little substance in it concerning the topic that the essay implies to speak upon. Don’t get me wrong; it’s well written, and I honestly liked the work. It had information that I found interesting, particularly concerning “The Killers” and film noir. But it is not, in my opinion, helpful in regards to a study in heroic fatalism.

So I read Hemingway’s “Killers”. I watched the film clip. And here I sit wondering how anyone
could have gleaned any plot from the original work with fewer than three or four readings.
Maybe I am as sensitive as brick to all or mostly dialogue works, but it seems that that type of
literature is in the realm of plays or scripts. It simply doesn’t seem to work as a short story style.

The story, once I understood it, is a simple one: two hitmen are after a “big Swede named Ole
Andreson”, a heavy-weight boxer. One could infer why he has a hit on him, maybe for throwing (or not throwing, as the case may be) a fight. They enter a restaurant that he frequents and wait for him to come in for dinner. The owner of the restaurant is kept in the restaurant-front, and the cook and Hemingway regular Nick Adams are taken into the back. The two men eventually leave and Nick is convinced to go tell Ole about the whole thing. Ole simply says what amounts to “Ok. Cool. Thanks. Bye.”

Again, perhaps I am not used to the gritty style of Noir literature. I love Film Noir. The realism, the atmosphere; it’s definitely something that I enjoy. The literary style is much the same, but at the same time something very different altogether. The atmosphere is there, but if Film Noir has a smoggy, New York City atmosphere, then the literary style is a smoggy… Tibet or Nepal. Sure it’s gritty, but, well, pretty thin. Not quite as believable as Film Noir in my opinion. Why is this, though?

The short story is all dialogue, as if Hemingway was afraid of anything else at the time he wrote “The Killers”. This, in my opinion, is effective in creating a psychological feel, but at the same time fails to allow the atmosphere that makes anything Noir, Noir to develop. This is the first work by Hemingway I have read, and frankly I am a little scared to delve into anything else by him. But I will, because one work does not make an author, or break a good reader.