Author, director’s similar vision sees book on screen
but on holiday with Isabel’s family they find out more about the child’s biological family. Tom’s need to protect Isabel wars with his instinct to do the right thing, while Isabel is protective of her child and Lucy (Florence Clery) is old enough to ask questions.
Rachel Weisz is poignant and affecting as the devastated Hanna Roennfeldt, the biological mother of the baby who washed ashore, and her character is the one who ultimately goes through the biggest emotional arc.
The three characters are set up for some huge tragic explosion, but the ending veers into melodrama. If you liked Brooklyn, you will like this. A Q & A with ML Stedman, author of The Light Between Oceans. Her first novel, the book is an international bestseller, and has sold more than two million copies: Why do you think your story has resonated with so many readers? That’s exactly what I asked my various publishers when the book came out, as it’s been translated into about 40 languages. They said that the story is universal; that the themes it deals with – such as how we determine right and wrong, the tension between love and duty, what family means – are relevant to people in every walk of life, wherever they live. I think there’s another reason, too, and that is that the readers have a lot of freedom. The book doesn’t tell them what to think, so they have to explore things for themselves. As I was writing, I tried to see the situation from each character’s point of view and convey their position without judging. The great result is that readers usually have their own ideas about who is “right” and “wrong”. How did you feel when you learnt that someone was interested in adapting your book for the big screen? Early readers had told me they found the story very visual and could imagine it on screen. So I suppose I understood it was theoretically possible, but given that the percentage of books that actually make it to film is minuscule (apparently on average it takes about a decade), I wasn’t holding my breath. Talk about your initial meeting with Derek Cianfrance. Was there any discussion as to changes to the story and/or the characters? Did you feel his vision was in synch with yours? I actually met Derek “on the page” a while before I met him face to face, when he e-mailed me the draft of his screenplay. It was with some trepidation that I clicked on the document, and I still remember the wonderful sense of relief that washed over me as I read the first page of the script – a sense of, “Oh, this is all going to be okay.” He clearly saw the story the same way I did; he was interested in the same themes I was; but he was also taking it into a new realm. I knew that a lot would have to fall by the wayside, but Derek showed such skill, in how he cut and stitched and added tiny touches here and there, so that you couldn’t see the joins between what I’d written and what he’d written.
Of course there were one or two things about his version of Tom that were different, but I could understand why he had made the changes. The engineering structure of a novel is very different from a film – it’s like the difference between carrying freight on a cargo ship and an aeroplane – you have to choose even more carefully what goes on board, and spread the load differently. I had the luxury of time and space (a reader might spend days or weeks with the book), whereas Derek had to fit things into a tighter, lighter craft, that would carry viewers through the whole experience in a couple of hours. How did you feel about the casting of Michael Fassbender as Tom Sherbourne, Alicia Vikander as Isabel Graysmark and Rachel Weisz as Hannah Roennfeldt? What did you think when you saw them on the big screen? I thought it was fabulous casting. All three actors share the knack of disappearing into their roles, so that you see not the actor, but the character. When I first saw a rough cut of the film, I was in awe: the raw vulnerability and tenderness they convey is very rare. Each time I have seen the film since, I have been even more impressed by their performances, largely because they don’t feel like “performances” at all: they so fully inhabit their roles. My “own” Tom and Isabel and Hannah still live on in a separate part of my brain, but the actors’ portrayals definitely share their DNA: they are utterly convincing and compelling in their own right. What would you tell fans of the book to expect in the movie? I would encourage people who loved the book to do what I did: watch the film with fresh eyes, on its own terms. I imagine that no two readers have an identical picture of, say, what Tom “should” look like, and the film can’t and doesn’t try to replicate each person’s private experience. It is its own thing: the world of Janus as lived by Derek and his actors. I find it visually extraordinarily beautiful, and very moving. It goes on resonating deep inside you long after you leave the cinema, and people may feel they want a little time to reflect on it. It has been made with great love and integrity. So let it sink in. Let it be what it is. – Supplied