Better In Your Head?--THE SHELTERING SKY

 

Spoiler Alert: the universe is not our friend.

THE BOOK-Written by Paul Bowles, released 1949

THE MOVIE-Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, written by Bertolucci & Mark Peploe, released 1990

THE STORY-Despair on the dunes. Port and Kit Moresby are two well-off Americans traveling North Africa alongside their pompous pal Tunner. More than a post-war escape, the jaunt is intended as a jolt. Lured by the lurid, the trio drift from dark place to dark place.

MIND THE GAP-The Sheltering Sky is Kit's book. Bowles describes her as a small blonde "saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze." On the surface, she seems an odd candidate for the title of Enthusiastic Globetrotter. Her anxieties have anxieties, and she's fond of saying stuff like, "Sunset is such a sad thing." She's the friend I'd see once a month, every month, and know no more about than I did on the day we met. 

This moribund marriage never stood chance one. No one staggers across a desert 7500 miles from home if reconciliation is truly possible.

Debra Winger is a terrible Kit. She eases up on the neurosis, and ergo, the character loses credibility. Her grief-powered collapse--so excruciating on the page--is a half-formed idea on the big screen. Rather than embrace degradation, Winger's Kit stumbles scene to scene, under the neutral influence of a duty fulfilled. Sadly, John Malkovich is underwhelming as Port, meaning Campbell "Steve from Singles" Scott is default best in show as the intrepid Tunner.

Travel in the pre-Internet days was so fun. You could still feel dwarfed by your surroundings.

The Sheltering Sky and Rabbit, Run share more in common besides being famed books turned into forgettable films. Both novels follow compulsively exasperating characters, self-absorbed trespassers squeamish in the here and now. They run--Kit from imminent severance; Port from payments due; Rabbit from responsibility. They run because they want to run. They run, although it would behoove them to stay in place. 

Are we beholden to acts of necessity? Does the willful action even exist? Are our very sneezes predetermined? Just a few of the spirit-smashing rhetorical questions I asked myself while reading The Sheltering Sky.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-After four decades, a noble effort at bringing Bowles's scarred rumble to movie theaters was made by the team behind 1987's Oscars-sweeping The Last Emperor. And so another classic book became cinematic claptrap. 

Bertolucci prioritized class distinctions over existential reckonings, thereby missing the entire point. Unsettling meditations are replaced with scenes of disciplined languor. Yes, the cinematography is lovely, but no single shot matches Bowles's brilliance. 

The man himself put it best: "The ending is idiotic and the rest is pretty bad."