On Chesil Beach (2018)

Film: On Chesil Beach (2018)

Stars: Saoire Ronan, Billy Howle, Emily Watson, Anne-Marie Duff

Director: Dominic Cooke

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of my biggest pet peeves when people talk about movies is when they state "but it's not loyal to the book."  This always feels like an absurd claim, and is usually leveled, at, say, adaptations of particularly popular authors like JRR Tolkien or Dan Brown, because people have long loved what was on the page and want to see their version of events come to life.  This can't work, though, cinematically, as books and films are two different beasts, one allowed to look inward and the other required to have some outward vision.  This would certainly need to be true of On Chesil Beach, a breathtaking but short novella that is largely conversational between two people on the night of their wedding, awaiting the pressures of their honeymoon.  The thing is, though, that this was a major test of my maxim "the book and the movie don't have to be different" as On Chesil Beach is quite possibly my favorite book.  Ever.  I read it every single year, oftentimes finishing it on a beach in the morning as it's terrible romantic and therefore it's going to be difficult for me to unbiased in both directions for this movie.  However, I want to give it a shot as I caught the film last night and am still feeling it in my gut.

(Spoilers Ahead) Like the book, the film is thin on plot and requires a great deal of feeling.  It revolves around Edward (Howle), a young man who aspires to be a writer of history books, who is desperately in love with a young woman named Florence (Ronan) who is quite "prim" and full of great love for her string quartet, for which she has great aspirations.  The film follows as Florence is deeply-frightened to lose her virginity to Edward, who is eager to have sex with his new wife and consummate the marriage.  The film starts with two waiters sniggering at the young couple, knowing what is about to happen between the two, and continually flashes back to the initial lives and meetings of these two, which is where most of the fleshing out of the film happens from the book, as this is of less consequence in the novel, since so much of McEwan's book revolves around Edward's internal thoughts.

The movie's biggest problem is in these flashbacks, as they aren't particularly necessary.  It's impossible for me not to compare the film to the book I've read so many times, but one of the exquisite, jewel-like creations of the story is the way that Florence and Edward feel anonymous, characters that feel so interchangeable with our own circumstances.  Giving them specific back stories doesn't always work.  I tolerated Florence's scene with her sister being shocked by the sex manual (while probably unnecessary, it at least underlined points crucial to the plot), but the scene with Florence's father and Edward playing tennis felt a bit much, and doesn't have the subtlety that the novel allows (in the book, it's lightly implied that Florence may have been molested by her father, though it's so light that you might not catch it at first or it might just be reading into things...in the movie, it's much more heavily implied and therefore makes her sexual reluctance seem to come from a different place, one the director/screenwriter don't explore other than a silent scene flash).  The stories about Edward's complicated relationship with his frequently nude (and mentally damaged) mother (Duff) also make the story seem more specific, ignoring that it would be natural (regardless of hangups with their parents) for two young people just before the Sexual Revolution to struggle with intimacy.  This doesn't work in the movie, and makes the story feel rather trite and conventional.

The titular scene is still marvelous, as it is in the novel, and the best part of the movie.  On Chesil Beach, where both of their lives changed forever, they state things they are too immature to communicate, with Florence proposing an open marriage, assuming that her sexual desire will never grow, and Edward, unable to see that her proposal comes from fear and not a lack of love, rejects the offer.  Howle and Ronan are wonderful in this scene, she filled with hopeful reservation and he with boorish immaturity.  The film slides poorly into the final pages of the novel, where McEwan departs from the book quite a bit, giving Florence a much happier ending than Edward, which doesn't work at all on the screen, and changes the message of the movie.  In the book, Edward and Florence never fall in love again, their lives lived out quietly.  What makes McEwan's work so magical is that, though it's short, he devotes 80% of the novel to that one night, because it's the most important of either of their lives.  He shows that in a fit of youth, they both altered their best chance of happiness forever, and pride & misunderstanding caused them to live lives that were always a bit hollow, absent of their soulmate.  In the movie, however, Florence gets largely what she wants, and clearly eventually gives in to sexual desire (having multiple children), while Edward lives a life of loss.  This changes the message of the movie, putting the onus of fault entirely on Edward, and not on a society that made them both have repressed feelings of sexuality.  Were it not for the book, the film would probably be "fine" and not a "disappointment" because I know how effective the ending could be (I cry every time in those last few pages and am usually unable to speak for hours after McEwan's brisk prose capture me so, and in the theater I shed not a single tear even though it's clearly supposed to be sad).  I get why McEwan did it (having one last moment between Florence & Edward is conventional if expected cinema), but it changes the message of what we've just seen, and makes it less cerebral and interesting.  On Chesil Beach, the movie, their paths changed, one for the better and the other for the worse, but in the novel, their existence altered, permanently, and less for the better and for the worse, but more in giving up the unknown.  That's a more powerful message, and McEwan loses that in the translation to the big-screen.