The Scarlet Letter

Never let it be said I do not go to great lengths for the actors I love.

If you’ve read The Scarlet Letter, you’ll know how huge an atrocity this movie is. If you haven’t, even a summary on SparkNotes will make it pretty obvious. At first humorous, the opening credits’ admission that this is “freely adapted” from Hawthorne’s novel is by the end acutely painful. The plot, characters, motivations and themes bear absolutely no resemblance to the work it is based upon… it is not only reworked, not only dumbed down, not only given the Hollywood treatment; it is a malicious, self-sabotaging, willful attempt to destroy everything compelling about the story. But as Demi Moore infamously stated, that’s okay, because most people haven’t read the book anyway.

Dimmesdale here becomes an unsympathetic coward who does not learn or grow or change as a result of his decisions, except to inexplicably side with the ‘town elders,’ and then inexplicably turn hero. Hester’s principles and motivations are one-dimensional and she ultimately abandons them, professing to have learned a valuable life lesson, to live happily ever after. And Roger Prynne is made sympathetic by inventing an entire Indian subplot, utterly nonsensical… An endlessly complex novel about what our choices and desires drive us to do and how they can destroy us is here reduced to a simple love story, its heroes and villains black and white, its morals absolute. There is no grey, no questioning, no complexity — in short, nothing that makes the novel great.

It needs to be said: if I’m Gary Oldman, and Demi Moore is making those ’sexy’ faces at me and breathing huskily, I’m not going to help laughing at her. So I admire his composure and professionalism, despite or considering the fact he was drunk during the majority of his scenes and cannot remember making the movie. I guess Demi had a hand in getting him into recovery, and so I’m perfectly willing to accept she is a good person, but oh my dear lord is she a terrible actress. Miscast and overshadowed by a brilliant but wasted Oldman, who singlehandedly makes this movie worth sitting through, due in no small part to the fact that he’s adorable with long hair and shows a bit of skin.

…even if his nude scenes are a bit silly and the sex scene… just… shwa? Yeah, doing it on a bed of rice sounds really sexy to me. And um, if anyone can explain to me the purpose of juxtaposing it with Mituba pleasuring herself with a candle and a bird, I’d really appreciate it.

Only recommended for die-hard Gary Oldman fans. Die-hard fans of Nathaniel Hawthorne ought to run screaming.