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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Ask the Dust

  
 
Blake Head
17:08 / 12.05.06
Ok, so I just found out that they’ve made a film adaptation of the Italian American writer John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust, which is out soon. And part of me wants to book my ticket now, immediately, twice, and another part of me has recoiled, I think, from the very idea of seeing it, because the novel’s such a touchstone for me, in fact the whole Bandini Quartet. In terms of formative or classic books being made into films, I don’t have any problem with re-imaginings of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis… Stan Lee… Homer or Shakespeare, or anything else that’s so well-known as to be sort of inevitable now (bring on Paradise Lost, I hear there’s a really half-decent battle scene), but partly, I think, because however imaginatively, faithfully or tastelessly done, I’ll always feel I have that personal relationship with the book that doesn’t reference the film. Which I suppose will continue to be true here, and in some ways it’s great, as obviously it means there are people in the film industry who want to film these moderately outside the mainstream books, and they’re able to sell the idea of that, and there are great examples of other American cult fiction making fine films (I’m thinking of Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son particularly but I’m sure there are numerous examples); but with this one, where I’m sure the majority of people couldn’t care less, it at least feels like relatively idiosyncratic source material and it’s a little overwhelming and even frightening that the increasing trend for filming from these sources is going to throw up versions of these books that less people might care about but have just as significant effects, and are effectively going to be the definitive versions.

And… Colin Farrell? As Arturo Bandini? My heart quakes. I really don’t want to be dreading it for that reason, but have to be hoping for a turning point in his career type performance. I keep thinking that he’s been in something good that should give me hope but it keeps slipping out of my mind, so maybe it’s wishful thinking. Anyway, it’s Bandini’s titanic ego that makes the novel, and I don’t know that he’ll be able to re-create that, and if he does to make it sympathetic – which the book does so well. Add to that the overt sexism and racism of the central character, and the unpleasantness generally of his inflated view of himself, and how closely tied that is to one of the central themes of the novel of self-destructive attitudes and inter-minority conflict, and I struggle to see how they will be able to make that as visible as it should be.

On a related note, I thought the recent version of Factotum (Charles Bukowski) with Matt Dillon made a very respectable attempt to convey the misanthropy and alcoholic withdrawal from the world of the main character Chinaski, without overly promoting or condemning that worldview, so that sort of broad, suggestive snapshot of Bukowski’s writing within an excellent self-contained film is probably the best I’m hoping for with Ask the Dust. Anyone else who admires Fante’s writing want to see this? Thoughts?
 
 
Blake Head
22:13 / 23.02.07
Anyone else seen this by now?

Because of a very limited UK cinema release I only saw this on DVD the other week. I liked it, but it’s neither the disaster I feared or an overwhelmingly successful recreation of the novel.

Comparing it to Factotum, Ask the Dust is more obviously a period piece while Factotum (from memory) is general enough that you could assume it takes place at anytime from the time of the novel’s writing to present day; it presents universalised themes of anger and numbness not tied too tightly to the setting. Ask the Dust has a more specific focus on the nature of American identity, it’s relation to race and colour, and inter-racial tension, which branches out into more general themes of humiliation and struggling to find solace and sympathy after dually committing and suffering from violent or degrading acts. And it is a film primarily about humiliation to begin with, and to a degree that’s where the film is strongest, portraying the two central characters both attracted and repulsed by one another, and humiliating one another in increasingly spiteful ways in order to to displace their feelings of attraction.

Colin Farrell’s tone and accent for the film immediately impressed, as did his relatively understated performance. There are a lot of nice touches that the film lifts directly from the novel, like the impoverished Bandini living on oranges in his boarding room, but the film struggles to convey the import of these facts. As the film goes on though, it’s obvious that Farrell either decided against or was technically incapable of incorporating the above-mentioned manic energy and ridiculous confidence of the novel’s protagonist, which in turn means that, lacking the justification of an intense, conflicted attraction for Camilla, Bandini seems a much paler and blander version of himself, and his calculated acts of malice appear as little more than petulance. Elettaria, not having read the novel, pointed out that generally films about the adolescent confusion of young, not terribly worldly male writers is much more difficult to 1) identify with, and 2) take seriously, from a female perspective, and that on those terms, and I quite agree, Ask the Dust seems to carry no more than a sweetly naïve impression of what humiliation and warring couples are like compared to a classic such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Just to go back to the anxiousness of my initial post, I have to say that I didn’t really feel negatively affected by the film at all. I don’t feel the producers missed the point, quite the contrary (it's a faithful, even conservative adaptation using the main points of the book), but I think they struggled to present the immediacy and passion the characters and themes demand, with the result that the film feels oddly bloodless, removed, a somewhat quaint, quite well acted, nicely produced, faithful to the source material, occasionally amusing period drama. So I liked it, and I think, in general terms, that I’d have to say I think it’s a good, small film, but that I’d struggle to have any sort of serious connection with it personally.
 
  
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