Louis de Bernières’s novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was one of those successes of which publishers dream. It was a surprise bestseller that emerged from the ranks of the upper-middlebrow, a serious but entertaining book that enhanced the intellectual standing of anyone seen reading it while also improving the publisher’s bottom line. Perhaps the final seal on its standing was given in the movie Notting Hill: Hugh Grant, at last ensconced in happiness with Julia Roberts, is seen with the book lying next to him on a bench in the garden. (The two films, by the way, share a production company. You work it out.)
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is also one of those books that becomes hard to read because it has been recommended to one by so many people. I kept trying and failing to read it for about five years. With the movie looming, however, I thought I’d better take a look at it, and very readable it turned out to be, though it is perhaps too long and wordy. For others, I admit, that may well translate into value for money. At any rate, for those who haven’t managed to get around to the novel, there is now the film of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.
Those who have read the book, who will be in the majority, will of course be interested to see how it has been adapted by scriptwriter Shawn Slovo (of A World Apart fame) and director John Madden (of Shakespeare in Love fame). Inevitably, it has been much reduced, concentrating on the semi-illicit romance between a Greek woman and an Italian soldier-musician during the Italian occupation of the Greek island of Cephallonia in World War II. That is certainly the central thread of the novel, and it could have done with a bit of a trim anyway, but the circumambient material does enrich the romantic narrative. One can do without the internal or external monologues of Mussolini, for instance, but the movie does feel thinner than the book.
It is a pity to have lost the parallel narrative of Carlo, l’omosessuale (that’s moffie in South African), because it explains some of his behaviour — in the movie, his great act of generosity towards the end seems rather unmotivated and thus a tad sentimental in the schematic Hollywood way. The film doesn’t have the long time span of the book, so the evolution in a character such as Mandras, the Greek partisan, is lost; but that is, I suppose, forgivable. The German officer, Weber (an excellent David Morrissey), who is an interesting part of the book, is still there — he is an ambivalent Nazi, few of which one ever gets to see on film.
It is shame, though, to have lost some of the background, which read a bit awkwardly in the novel but was nonetheless interesting in the way it outlined what happened to Greece after the war, the internecine murderousness of the communists, and so on. It explained much, and gave the novel its tragic historical dimension. The novel is also able to depict the full horror and absurdity of war in a way that is rather glossed over in the film. And, naturally, the ending has been changed.
As a movie, though, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin has strengths and weaknesses of its own. A notable strength is John Hurt as Dr Iannis, the island’s local physician, and father of the lovely Pelagia (Penelope Cruz). Hurt has both the gravitas and the levity to play his part to perfection — and his is the only accent, among a plethora of strangely non-specific accents, that sounds decent. Cruz is also a strength, portraying a woman of inner steel as well as some winsomeness. She wants to follow in her father’s footsteps as a doctor, but in the meantime she has to deal with affairs of the heart: her betrothal to a local fisherman, Mandras (Christian Bale, looking most un-Greek), who will later join the partisans, leaving Pelagia to the attentions of one of the invaders, Captain Corelli.
And that brings us to the film’s greatest weakness: Nicolas Cage as Captain Corelli. In my view, he pretty much sinks what is otherwise a fairly watchable movie, and undoes the hard work of the script and the direction. To be fair, though, an actor of great skill would have been needed to make Corelli believable. In the novel, he is something of a caricature already, a cliché of the Italian lover, throwing himself at Pelagia’s feet and so forth. That bit is omitted from the film, but otherwise Corelli is very much there in his pertinent aspects: he is a flamboyant romantic, a mandolin player, out of place in war, in love with music, in love with love, given to grandiose gestures; an enemy, but a good man who can win over even a resistant Pelagia.
Corelli is meant to be a charmer, but Cage has no charm. He can’t even act charm. The best he can do with his doleful equine face is lift his eyebrows into a circumflex of either happiness or unhappiness, depending on the situation.