Khan1 Natasha Khan Guillean Literature 100 29 November 2005 Character Depictions in A Time to Kill Adaptations of any kind from one medium to another have always been difficult. Since the establishment of film in the early 20th century as the newest mass medium people have adapted literature onto the screen. Some have succeeded and others greatly failed. John Grisham’s first novel A Time to Kill, published in 1987, was successfully adapted into a film version in 1996 by screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and director Joel Schumacher. The two mediums are so vastly different in many ways with their ability to create good storytelling. The novel A Time to Kill is such a good story because of the author’s ability to vividly describe in detail the setting, time period, thoughts and feelings of society, and most importantly the characters, all of which fuels the plot of the story. A novel can contain long stanzas describing minute characteristics of a person or a place that allow the reader to imagine what the author imagined, or have the freedom to interpret things their own way. An author holds so much power, they can alter the entire feel or direction a piece of literature may take with a slight change of point of view. Film on the other hand relies greatly on visual attributes. The location the film is shot at, the sound, the camera angle of a shot, a good script, the music played in the background, the makeup and wardrobe, the pacing, the lighting of the film, the colors, the mise en scene of a sequence, and something extremely important; the capabilities of the actors, are only a few of the things that go into making a successful film adaptation of a novel. Film is a
Khan2 fascinating art form. The wrong casting of a film or playing the wrong music can completely distort a films ability to tell a story correctly. There are so many elements of film but the one that the film adaptation of “A Time to Kill” relied greatly on was the look of the actors and their portrayal of the characters. There are many differences that literature and film use to dramatize characters to tell a good story that creates an overall theme. In A Time to Kill the theme is modern day racial politics in southern America, and the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the characters convey this extraordinarily. The best way to begin describing the dramatization of the characters in the novel and the film version of A Time to Kill is to give an overall synopsis of the story. It is set in 1980’s Clanton, Mississippi. It is a small southern town that embodies the main ingredient that most small southern towns do; racism and poverty. Whites and blacks alike say the word “nigger” with no regret or flinch of any kind of realization of the negative attributes the word has come to withhold. It is summertime and extremely hot, the town stinks of sweat. Even though it has been over twenty years since the schools were desegregated, the town drips with racism and it seems inevitable that some kind of uproar waits in the midst to explode. That uproar occurs when a black man named Carl Lee Hailey is convicted of shooting two white rednecks on the steps of the Clanton courthouse one sunny afternoon. The town is sent into an upheaval where everyone questions the existence of racism within their society and within themselves. The town is out of control due to riots where thousands of black people chant “Free Carl Lee,” and the KKK and some white radicals chant “Fry Carl Lee” (Grisham 503). The Ku Klux Klan is out to destroy anyone associated with freeing Carl Lee. They set fires to people’s houses and beat others. One of the adjacent themes is if Carl Lee Hailey, a black man,
Khan3 indeed did have just-cause for killing the two young white rednecks because they raped and attempted to hang his ten-year-old daughter Tonya. One of the main prerogatives of the story is the question of whether or not a black man can receive a fair trial in a part of the deep-south where the majority of the people are white. The story is a courtroom thriller that sets Hailey’s young defense attorney Jake Brigance against the ruthless publicity-loving District Attorney Rufus Buckley, in a fight to prove Hailey’s just-cause for his actions and to keep him out of jail and the gas chamber. Jake Brigance is the protagonist of the story. Grisham wrote the story in the point of view of third person so the audience can easily see into the mind of many characters, especially Brigance. In the novel he is in his early thirties somewhat handsome and clean-cut. He has a pretty wife and four-year-old daughter. He is a smart southern liberal who is slightly cocky, ethical, and has a promising career as a defense attorney. His ethics and patience are constantly tried and tested throughout the story. He supposedly represents the “new south” (as quoted from the movie), a new generation of southerners who are less racist and prejudice than the previous generation. That seems like the perfect way to put it, “less” racist. In the book everyone, including Brigance, has no problem referring to African-American people as “niggers.” It just rolls off everyone’s tongue as easily as saying the words “pencil” or “dog.” Does the “new south” really exist? In the film version the word is used much less. Writing the word somehow has a less negative impact than saying it out loud. The screenwriter was probably sensitive to the word’s effect on most people. When the word is used in the film it is usually from the mouth of a white racist radical, making the audience hate them even more. Brigance is more ethical, moral, and righteous than many other characters in the story. He becomes
Khan4 obsessed with the defense against Carl Lee. He is passionate in part because he knows if Carl Lee Hailey were a white man he would not have been convicted of his vigilantes act. In the film the actor Matthew Mcconaughey portrays the central character Jake Brigance. Of course, Maconaughey is much too young, attractive, and has a significantly better body than Grisham intended for the character to be, but that’s Hollywood. Hollywood likes to romanticize and bloat character depictions to impossible standards, but other than Maconaughey's extremely good looks he was perfect for the part. His acting ability was exceptional in this role. He embodied the passion the character has for trying to fight for fairness and understanding in a corrupt justice system and society. Liz Miller, who cheekily refers to herself as the “Hollywood Madam,” wrote in one of her columns several laws of film adaptations. The first rule she described as: “A film adaptation may not, through omission or direct action, undermine or reverse the meanings and morals of the source material” (Miller 2). The film version of Jake Brigance was successful abiding to this rule. Maconaughey (though younger and better looking than the novel version of the character), was skillfully able to capture Brigance’s spirit and the force that ultimate drove the character. Brigance is a man who risked his entire life and the lives of his friends and family because he truly believed he had a moral duty, no matter the consequences, to help Hailey be deemed innocent. Can we live in a society where we allow people to take justice into their own hands? This is a question constantly brought up in the story. The vigilante in this tale is Carl Lee Hailey, a poor working black man in the south who kills two rednecks because they raped and attempted to kill his ten-year-old daughter Tonya. Hailey is written as a mournful father who felt he had no choice but to kill the two white men, because
Khan5 otherwise there would have been no justice for his daughter and he could not have live with himself. The question of whether or not he killed them is not present….he did. Brigance pleads Hailey’s innocence in court by reason of temporary insanity. Nobody believes he was insane at the time; the claim is simply a cover. What Brigance inevitably tries to convince the jury is if Hailey were a white man and the two men he killed were black men who raped his daughter, he would not have even been convicted. Brigance makes the townspeople question themselves, their beliefs, morality, and their racism. Hailey was uncontrollably compelled to gain vengeance for his daughter, because he knew the two rednecks would probably not have been punished under the unjust justice system in the south. The film version of Carl Lee Hailey was played by Samuel L. Jackson. He did an excellent job of playing the uneducated-sorrowful-black-vigilante father, but something lacked in his performances compared to the novel version of the character. In the book, Hailey seems more in tune with the grandeur and importance the case has. All of America is watching the case unfold in the newspapers and on television. The press is everywhere, everyone has an opinion. The KKK are rallying and terrorizing everywhere. The NAACP and ACLU are very much involved as well. In the film, Hailey seems almost oblivious to these factors, painted clueless and less in tune with reality than in the book. Perhaps this man was a more effectively written character then on the screen. In the novel, his thoughts and actions were described in detail and he was better understood and known as a person, not just a representation of racism in the south. This connected the reader with the person he was and allowed them to sympathize with him more, which ultimately led them to understand what he came to represent. Liz Miller’s second rule of
Khan6 film adaptation is: “A film adaptation must adequately capture what made the source material compelling, as long as it does not conflict with the first rule” (Miller 2). Although all of Hailey’s character was not captured on film, his main purpose in the story was. The characters main role is to play the despairing black father who was heartbroken by his daughters raped and was forced to obtain justice in an unjust society, and Jackson was able to capture. This is the main role that the character plays, why he exists in the story, which allows audience was able to sympathize with him. Jake Brigance’s FOIL is the ruthless district attorney Rufus Buckley. He is a white- racist powerful man who likes sending people to the gas chamber. The two portrayals of his character, in the novel and on screen, are most alike than any other character. Maybe it is just easier to portray a villain than anything else. He is easy to hate. Kevin Spacey plays him in the film, and his skills shine as an actor. Everything from is his look, walk, southern drawl to his slimy cheating tactics in the courtroom are extremely accurate and what I envisioned the character to be. Spacey’s dramatics capture the villainous Rufus Buckley so well, which is very important to the plot of the story because he represents the racist mentality the majority of the south has. This story is compelling because it makes you realize that racism is very much present in modern day, and that makes you question your own morals I know it made me do so. This story has strong characters, with some set in their ways and others constantly conflicted. Conflict is what drives a story. The fact is people react to other people. The dramatization of the characters in A Time to Kill, in the novel and the film, is what grabs an audience. People are and always will be fascinated by evil. This story presents evil in the form of racism. It presents racism this way but then questions if it is
Khan7 evil at all, or if it is just the continually taught entity in an unjust society. The story suggests that as long as we have people that fight for a better more just world, then there will always be something left fighting for. The characters are not perfect, if anything they are very flawed and very human.
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