Dark Places
Sep. 17th, 2006 02:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saavedra77My brother-in-law gave me James Ellroy's novel The Black Dahlia last Christmas, so this was one of the first books I read, this year. I'd already read several of Ellroy's other books, which tend to read like Trent Reznor channeling Dashiell Hammet. Or maybe vice-versa.
In many respects, The Black Dahlia typifies Ellroy's preoccupations: mid-twentieth-century L.A., crime organized and otherwise, the L.A.P.D.'s--apparently--endemic corruption, Cold War politics, casual violence, spectacularly fucked-up relationships, sex and death. Pulp fiction, pretty much. Also, as in many of Ellroy's novels, a central character has been scarred by the murder of a woman he was close to as a child--a recurrent feature which was gave away a key fact about the author even before the publication of his extremely harrowing personal memoir, My Dark Places. The author's own mother was murdered and dumped in an empty lot when Ellroy was a child--much like poor Elizabeth Short, the real-life "Black Dahlia."
The Black Dahlia is an early Ellroy novel--not his best, I think: The novel is dense, complex, intense, almost feverish. I found it a frustrating read, though: the story doesn't really work as a whodonit, since Ellroy doesn't really provide enough information for the reader to make an intelligent guess until near the end of the book. As in several of his novels, events often turn on characters so flagrantly insane that you wonder how they've avoided being locked up. Plots unfold within plots and every time that you think Ellroy has explained the book's central mystery he manages to unwind another one, to the point where I found myself wondering when it would be over. Still, I soldiered on to the end, which induced little more than a shrug.
There must have been something compelling about the story, because when I heard that Brian DePalma was going to adapt the novel as a film, I went back and re-read the novel. It went down better a second time, but I still find some of Ellroy's characters pyschologically implausible--or, at least, inadequately explained.
Having now seen DePalma's miscast, abbreviated, confusing adaptation, I find myself wanting to defend the novel's relative virtues: Josh Hartnett sulks through the first hour of the film, making a character who's supposed to be cold and clever into a somnambulist. Aaron Eckhart seems too self-aware, too slim, too much of an operator to play the volatile and physically imposing Lee Blanchard. Scarlett Johansson's Kay Lake is occasionally compelling, but Brian DePalma often uses her as an icon rather than a character. All three characters come across much, much more strongly in the novel. And if the resolution of Ellroy's novel seems convoluted, DePalma renders The Big Reveal almost incomprehensible by condensing it into five minutes of bewildering scenery-mastication. Even if I was frustrated by the way Ellroy winds his story down, at least I knew what was going on; I'm not sure that I could have said the same thing if I hadn't read the book.
The film does have its virtues, though: DePalma's cinematography is sweeping, colorful, every bit as intense as Ellroy's prose. Mira Kirshner breaks your heart in the few brief glimses we're given of Elizabeth Short. Hillary Swank vamps it up very credibly as bad-girl Maddy Linscomb. But it's just not enough to justify the ticket price.
My advice? If you're interested in murder mysteries based in L.A., you'd do better to read My Dark Places. He wrote this book late in his career, finally managing to talk about the real-life traumas that shaped his fictional obsessions. And Ellroy is far more eloquent writing about things he's lived through.
Or, alternatively, there's Hollywoodland, which actually tells a coherent story ...
In many respects, The Black Dahlia typifies Ellroy's preoccupations: mid-twentieth-century L.A., crime organized and otherwise, the L.A.P.D.'s--apparently--endemic corruption, Cold War politics, casual violence, spectacularly fucked-up relationships, sex and death. Pulp fiction, pretty much. Also, as in many of Ellroy's novels, a central character has been scarred by the murder of a woman he was close to as a child--a recurrent feature which was gave away a key fact about the author even before the publication of his extremely harrowing personal memoir, My Dark Places. The author's own mother was murdered and dumped in an empty lot when Ellroy was a child--much like poor Elizabeth Short, the real-life "Black Dahlia."
The Black Dahlia is an early Ellroy novel--not his best, I think: The novel is dense, complex, intense, almost feverish. I found it a frustrating read, though: the story doesn't really work as a whodonit, since Ellroy doesn't really provide enough information for the reader to make an intelligent guess until near the end of the book. As in several of his novels, events often turn on characters so flagrantly insane that you wonder how they've avoided being locked up. Plots unfold within plots and every time that you think Ellroy has explained the book's central mystery he manages to unwind another one, to the point where I found myself wondering when it would be over. Still, I soldiered on to the end, which induced little more than a shrug.
There must have been something compelling about the story, because when I heard that Brian DePalma was going to adapt the novel as a film, I went back and re-read the novel. It went down better a second time, but I still find some of Ellroy's characters pyschologically implausible--or, at least, inadequately explained.
Having now seen DePalma's miscast, abbreviated, confusing adaptation, I find myself wanting to defend the novel's relative virtues: Josh Hartnett sulks through the first hour of the film, making a character who's supposed to be cold and clever into a somnambulist. Aaron Eckhart seems too self-aware, too slim, too much of an operator to play the volatile and physically imposing Lee Blanchard. Scarlett Johansson's Kay Lake is occasionally compelling, but Brian DePalma often uses her as an icon rather than a character. All three characters come across much, much more strongly in the novel. And if the resolution of Ellroy's novel seems convoluted, DePalma renders The Big Reveal almost incomprehensible by condensing it into five minutes of bewildering scenery-mastication. Even if I was frustrated by the way Ellroy winds his story down, at least I knew what was going on; I'm not sure that I could have said the same thing if I hadn't read the book.
The film does have its virtues, though: DePalma's cinematography is sweeping, colorful, every bit as intense as Ellroy's prose. Mira Kirshner breaks your heart in the few brief glimses we're given of Elizabeth Short. Hillary Swank vamps it up very credibly as bad-girl Maddy Linscomb. But it's just not enough to justify the ticket price.
My advice? If you're interested in murder mysteries based in L.A., you'd do better to read My Dark Places. He wrote this book late in his career, finally managing to talk about the real-life traumas that shaped his fictional obsessions. And Ellroy is far more eloquent writing about things he's lived through.
Or, alternatively, there's Hollywoodland, which actually tells a coherent story ...
