The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - Movie Review Example

The magazine for which this review will be written is Entertainment Weekly. This is a magazine that focuses upon entertainment as a whole, includingfilm. This magazine caters to an audience that enjoys movies but are not really film buffs per se. Its movie reviews are written simply and economically, with a minimum of “$20 words”. In other words, their movie reviews are written for an audience that it not necessarily erudite and an expert on film, but enjoys movies and entertainment in general. This magazine lends itself well to the analysis at hand, as it is an entertainment magazine, and this means that one of the topics with which it concerns itself are books. Each week, several books are reviewed along with the newest movies. Since the analysis that follows involves both an explanation of a book and a movie, and how these the books translates into film, then it is pertinent that such a review be published in a magazine that concerns itself with the movie viewer and book work alike. What’s more, the writing style of this magazine is plain but not prosaic. In other words, the reviews are written with flair, but use slang and sometimes seem conversational. For instance, one movie review contains the phrase “man, was I wrong!” Moreover, Stephen King hosts a column that is featured in many of the magazines, and his column is surprisingly funny and uses words such as “booyah!” Therefore, a review that would be featured in this magazine would not be written in a scholarly fashion, but, rather, would be written in a conversational tone that would occasionally feature slang. Unfamiliar words, that is, words that would be unfamiliar to the lay person, should be kept to a minimum. Movie Review There are a number of differences between the movie and the book, some of them minor, others major. One of the minor differences concerns the character Noah. In the book, Noah is a Joad, but he is a minor character who decides that he wants to leave the family in Chapter XVIII. His purpose in the book is not really clear – he seems to be superfluous. He does, however, have a character that is a bit fleshed out. His backstory is that, when he was born, Pa Joad delivered him and, not knowing how to deliver a child, he pulled him out forcefully and ended up deforming him (Steinbeck, 1939, p. 78). From then on, Noah grew up to be a “strange” man, who wasn’t really stupid but seemed not to care (Steinbeck, 1939, p. 78). Noah ends up leaving the family when the family gets to Arizona, because he “like to jus’ stay here. Like to lay here forever. Never get hungry an’ never get sad. Lay in the water all life long, lazy as a brood sow in the mud” (Steinbeck, 1939, p. 204). In the movie, Noah is not really introduced, although he is there, at the beginning of the film, and is seen throughout the first part. The scene where the men bathe in the river does occur in the film, and Noah is one of the bathers, then he is not seen again (Ford). This is a change that did not really work, because it seems to be the result of sloppy editing. Most likely the scene where Noah decides to leave the family at the river was filmed, then edited out. Therefore, the character literally disappears without an explanation. Because there was no explanation for the absence of his character, one of the major themes of the movie is diminished – and that is that the family disintegrates as the Joads move across the country. In the book, Grandpa dies, then Noah leaves, then Grandma dies, and then Connie leaves. This leaves the impression upon the reader that the family is breaking apart, little by little, and this serves as foreshadowing for the family’s later troubles. However, when the filmmaker decided to write out Noah’s character without an explanation, it is not only confusing for the viewing audience, but it also minimizes a major theme of the book. Another minor plot point in the book that was left out of the movie altogether was the unification of the Joads with the Wilson family. The Wilson family, introduced in Chapter 13, was a family whom the Joads met on the road. The Wilson family was having perpetual car trouble, so the Joads offered to take the Wilsons with them on the trip (Steinbeck, 1939, Chapter 13). The Wilsons were symbolic in the Steinbeck book, as one of the major themes is that the people, the salt of the earth people, such as the Joads, are willing to cooperate and help out one another. This was presumably why Steinbeck introduced this family. Their absence in the movie thus diminished this major plot point. Also, at one point the Wilsons and the Joads had to part company, which further served to further the theme of the family disintegrating, as the Wilsons were becoming like family to the Joads. Therefore, the absence of this family from the movie lessened the impact of these two major themes from the novel. Although it is unclear why this family was left out of the movie, it was probably for economy’s sake, for the filmmaker probably did not want the film to run too long. Another possible reason for the absence of the Wilsons was because the filmmaker wanted to put the focus exclusively on the Joads, and introducing the Wilsons would take the focus off the Joads somewhat. However, it would have been better to show the Wilsons in the movie, because it would enable the viewers to see another family that is struggling, thus make the struggle a bit more universal. Still another aspect of the novel that did not translate well to film was the chapters that alternated with the story itself. In these chapters, the story of the migrants were told, without the Joads involvement. These chapters served to provide a backstory for the migrants’ plight. One chapter focused on the description of Oklahoma and its disintegration into a dust bowl where no crops could grow (Chapter 1). Another chapter focused on the plight of a turtle who doggedly makes a journey across a road, despite hardships befalling it, such as being struck by a car (Chapter 3). The turtle was introduced into the book as symbolic of the migrant workers themselves, as the migrants, like the turtle, faced many challenges and hardships, yet kept going. Another chapter focused upon used car salesmen, and how they were cheating the migrants (Chapter 5). Other chapters focus upon the plight of the society of migrants, which served to present the reader with the social world that is surrounding the Joads, without actually including the Joads in the action (Chapters 11, 12, 14). While these chapters are important to the novel, as they serve to explain the larger picture of what is happening around the Joads, therefore making the plight of the Joads more universal, it is understandable why the filmmaker chose not to include them in the movie. To include entire scenes that do not focus on the Joad family would make the movie seem disjointed and would disrupt the flow of the story. And, there were certain of these chapters that were included in the movie, with the filmmakers taking artistic license with the scenes, as they made these chapters seem to have occurred to some of the movie’s characters. For instance, Chapter 5 is a chapter that serves as a backstory but does not involve any members of the family or other characters. In this chapter, a tractor comes to knock down the house of a tenant farmer, and the tenant farmer threatens the person driving the tractor with a gun. After pointing out that this action would not do any good, as, if the man shot the man driving the tractor, the man would hang and the house would be lost anyhow, the man in the tractor continues on and razes the house (Chapter 5). This scene also occurred in the movie, but it was told as if it happened directly to Muley, a man who Tom encounters in his parent’s abandoned house. Therefore, the filmmaker took this important scene and integrated it so that it appeared to happen to a character in the film. This happened again later on in the film with the diner scene. In the book, in Chapter 15, the diner scene involves a character the waitress named Mae and a random man who comes into the diner in search of bread. Mae sells the man a loaf of bread for ten cents, then, out of the kindness of her heart, allows the two small children in the scene to have candy at the price of two for a penny (Chapter 15). This scene advanced Steinbeck’s larger theme, which is that the salt of the earth people are willing to help each other out when they are in need, which makes this scene important. In the movie, this scene is integrated so that it appeared to happen to the Joads, with the man who asks for the loaf of bread being Pa Joad, and the two young children who eye the candy being Ruthie and Winfield Joad. In this way, the scene remains intact, yet the flow of the movie is not disrupted by the appearance of random characters that might confuse the audience. These integrations served a good purpose, in that it took plot points that would not translate well to screen, as these plot points did not concern any of the focal characters, and blended them in seamlessly into the story by making it seem that they happened to the characters in the movie. One aspect of the movie that was substantially changed from the book that did not work at all was how Tom came to leave the family. In the book, Tom had to leave because his sister, Ruthie, told another little girl about her big brother Tom who killed a man and was hiding out with them. At this point, Tom knows that it is only a matter of time before the authorities come looking for him, and this leads him to leave the family and set out for his new destiny, which is to carry on the work that Casey was doing and try to organize the workers so that they can get better wages (Chapter 28). In the movie, it was not well explained how Tom came to know that he was wanted, and how the authorities found out where he was. In the movie, Tom wakes up to in the middle of the night to see that the authorities are looking at his car, and writing down the license plate. Then the authorities are heard talking to the manager of the camp, and the manager is admonishing them by telling them that they needed a warrant and the authorities replied that they would be back with a warrant later (Ford). From there, Tom surmised that it was only a matter of time before the authorities would find him, so he tells Ma that he has to leave. This is a change that did not work and cannot really be explained. How the authorities found Tom was not explained, and this made this plot point confusing. After all, the family made sure that they got as far away from the camp where Tom killed a man as possible, and there was nothing connecting the Joads to the previous camp. Therefore, to clear up the confusion, the filmmakers should have stuck to the original story, which was that the little girl ratted out Tom and this is why he had to leave. Overall, the overarching theme of the movie, which was the hardships that the Joad family suffered, seemed to be downplayed in the movie, compared to the book. In the movie, there was some sense that this family was suffering, but they did not suffer as much as the Joads did not the book. In this way, the overall plight and suffering did not translate as well onto the screen as in the book. For instance, the starvation that the family suffered was radically downplayed in the movie, and barely even touched upon. Rose of Sharon lost her baby in the book because the baby was not receiving nourishment (Chapter 30). This did not occur in the movie, as the movie ends with Rose of Sharon presumably still pregnant. The poor conditions of the camps in the movie were not as bad as those in the book, so this is another element that did not translate well onto the screen. The rich men who are the cause of all the problems in the novel are present in the film, but their appearances are so short that they really do not make much of an impact. So, overall, the audience for the film version of The Grapes of Wrath did not get the same sense of suffering as the readers of the novel, which made the movie considerably less powerful than the book. However, all in all, the movie was excellent. The casting could not have been better for the main characters, as Ma and Pa Joad look exactly as one would expect that they would look, and Henry Fonda turns in an excellent performance in the role of Tom. This is an element of the book that the movie put to good use. The movie was also well-paced, and was never boring. The story of the Joads is a compelling one, and this is true for both the movie and book. And the element that did translate well was the theme of coordination. As in the book, one of the themes in the movie was that the migrant men need to organize and coordinate so that they can get better treatment from the landowners. This theme is shown well in the movie, in several different places – in the scene where Casey is in the tent, and makes a speech about organizing and in one of the final scenes where Tom tells Ma that organizing men would be his new life’s work. Also, one of the earlier scenes, where a man protests a landowner’s offering of jobs, stating that the landowner wants to cheat them and renege on promises, which causes the altercation where a woman is shot and Tom assaults a man, is an early inkling that the organization element would become prominent later in the movie. Sources Used Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York, NY: Penguin Group. Entertainment Weekly. New York, NY: Time Publications. The Grapes of Wrath. Dir. John Ford. Perf. Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine. 20th Century Fox: 1940. Read More