One of my favorite episodes of the Twilight Zone focuses on a gangster who has just died and been greeted by an angel. The angel guides the man into an eden paradise of booze, women, and constant winnings at a casino. After some time, he becomes bored of winning all the time. The women are too easy to get and the thrill of gambling is gone. It's no fun when he can't lose. When he tells the angel he can't take it anymore and he is ready for "the other place," the angel replies, "What do you mean? This is the other place!"
Apart from Downey's stellar performance, a reason "Less Than Zero" is good is because it is based on wonderful material. It is all about Bret Easton Ellis' portrayal of the suburban hell. Too many kids who are too rich and spend too much time and money on booze, parties, and cocaine. With all their good fortune of being brought up in a society where they can choose to do anything, they do nothing.
Where setting has both faithfully and successfully been adapted from Ellis' original material, two key elements have been changed which hold the movie back. Though McCarthy plays his role very well, the trouble is in the writing. Clay's subdued yet conscious driven character is written for the screen as a vehicle to guide us through this weird world of endless excess. He is there so we can have someone to sympathize with while we try to absorb everything around us.
This is a grave miscalculation.
Rarely do I critique movies on how they were changed from their original work, but the screenwriters have done the novel an injustice. Clay, as he was written in the novel, should be just as disaffected as his friends. He is no better or worse, he is just alive enough to notice what is going on around him after coming home from three months abroad. He also has a terrible cocaine problem of his own. The brilliance in the novel is, just like Nick in the Great Gatsby, Clay is an unreliable narrator. He is able to live as a real character, have good and bad things happen to him, and still have no control of the outcome in the story. He is powerless because he is completely indifferent. Things only change in his perceptions of how they actually happen. This is almost vital to the story in that it opens with the premise that things can't possibly get worse, yet by the end, they don't get any better. Sure, a reliable storytelling method works for the movie. It is an easy way out though, and Ellis' critically objective "think for yourself" method turns into a preachy sympathy play where morals are instructed rather than figured out with attention to style and detail.
The second change, one that must have stirred up much controversy, is the rampant moral righteousness, even in material as seemingly morally depraved as this. Again, these are not simple, "I wish they had done this" gripes, they are critiques on events that truly deter from the message of the original material. As for the latent amount of sexual ambiguity that is missing from the movie, I believe it was viewed as too "delicate" of a subject. A reason the novel is so shocking is because it was published in a time when drugs and homosexuality were not discussed in terms of adolescents who could "do it and get away with it." However, It is important to note that the characters should not be viewed as "bisexual," but rather sexually indifferent. The children were never taught the difference between right and wrong. They have no sense of moral decency and no concept of sensitivity or the meaning of love.
They do whatever gives them instant pleasure.
We realize early on that Clay cannot save Julian. However, it is all the more powerful and dreadful for Julian to be left alive in his human hell hole with Clay indifferent as he is in the end of the novel than to have Julian die in the car with Clay hugging Blair. At the time, these subjects must have been of some concern to the producers. They obviously wanted viewers to take the film seriously and not as satirical as the book is presented. Still, while Julian's death is a sad scene, nothing can be worse than being stuck in this moral wasteland.
While the film focuses on having everything and losing it all, the brilliance of the novel is being unable to lose any of it. That's real hell.
Apart from Downey's stellar performance, a reason "Less Than Zero" is good is because it is based on wonderful material. It is all about Bret Easton Ellis' portrayal of the suburban hell. Too many kids who are too rich and spend too much time and money on booze, parties, and cocaine. With all their good fortune of being brought up in a society where they can choose to do anything, they do nothing.
Where setting has both faithfully and successfully been adapted from Ellis' original material, two key elements have been changed which hold the movie back. Though McCarthy plays his role very well, the trouble is in the writing. Clay's subdued yet conscious driven character is written for the screen as a vehicle to guide us through this weird world of endless excess. He is there so we can have someone to sympathize with while we try to absorb everything around us.
This is a grave miscalculation.
Rarely do I critique movies on how they were changed from their original work, but the screenwriters have done the novel an injustice. Clay, as he was written in the novel, should be just as disaffected as his friends. He is no better or worse, he is just alive enough to notice what is going on around him after coming home from three months abroad. He also has a terrible cocaine problem of his own. The brilliance in the novel is, just like Nick in the Great Gatsby, Clay is an unreliable narrator. He is able to live as a real character, have good and bad things happen to him, and still have no control of the outcome in the story. He is powerless because he is completely indifferent. Things only change in his perceptions of how they actually happen. This is almost vital to the story in that it opens with the premise that things can't possibly get worse, yet by the end, they don't get any better. Sure, a reliable storytelling method works for the movie. It is an easy way out though, and Ellis' critically objective "think for yourself" method turns into a preachy sympathy play where morals are instructed rather than figured out with attention to style and detail.
The second change, one that must have stirred up much controversy, is the rampant moral righteousness, even in material as seemingly morally depraved as this. Again, these are not simple, "I wish they had done this" gripes, they are critiques on events that truly deter from the message of the original material. As for the latent amount of sexual ambiguity that is missing from the movie, I believe it was viewed as too "delicate" of a subject. A reason the novel is so shocking is because it was published in a time when drugs and homosexuality were not discussed in terms of adolescents who could "do it and get away with it." However, It is important to note that the characters should not be viewed as "bisexual," but rather sexually indifferent. The children were never taught the difference between right and wrong. They have no sense of moral decency and no concept of sensitivity or the meaning of love.
They do whatever gives them instant pleasure.
We realize early on that Clay cannot save Julian. However, it is all the more powerful and dreadful for Julian to be left alive in his human hell hole with Clay indifferent as he is in the end of the novel than to have Julian die in the car with Clay hugging Blair. At the time, these subjects must have been of some concern to the producers. They obviously wanted viewers to take the film seriously and not as satirical as the book is presented. Still, while Julian's death is a sad scene, nothing can be worse than being stuck in this moral wasteland.
While the film focuses on having everything and losing it all, the brilliance of the novel is being unable to lose any of it. That's real hell.