Set in 1999, the film opens as Samson Young ( Billy Bob Thornton), a blocked and terminally ill American author, arrives in London-which is itself teetering on the edge of anarchy for vaguely explained reasons-to stay in the luxurious apartment belonging to wildly successful writer Mark Aspery (Jason Issacs), who has taken his crummy New York hovel in exchange. A boring and garish mess that even fans of the book will find nearly impossible to follow, this is easily the most embarrassing film with which Amis has ever been even vaguely connected.
Now, at long last, the film version of “London Fields” has finally emerged after a long delay-it began filming in 2013 and has been mired in legal difficulties ever since it was pulled from the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival at the last second-and if it does anything, it proves once and for all that it is a property that should have been left on the page. But not even the likes of David Cronenberg or Michael Winterbottom-each of whom has had past success with films based on books deemed impossible to film with, respectively, “ Naked Lunch” and “Tristram Shandy”-were able to figure out how to do it. Of course, this has not stopped people from attempting to bring it to the big screen over the years.
Ever since Martin Amis published his 1989 novel London Fields, most of its readers have said two things about it-that his trippy and oh-so-meta murder mystery meditation was one of the finest works of his entire career, and that it was written in such a specific and unique manner that it would be all but impossible to transform it into a film.
0 kommentar(er)
