Robin Morris

I just read the book to my partner and we enjoyed it. This caused me to feel that the movie was likely to disappoint, but we watched it openmindedly and hadn't read the reviews. Afterwards I had to say that it seemed a mess... I mean it had this feeling like Memento with its out of order sequencing, something that seemed very distracting and confusing after the careful, in-sequence and drawn out novel, in which we take Theo's journey along with him...only a God could view a story in this way, after all one thing leads to another in life, we don't just flit back and forth from our adult life to our child life, unless we are Billy Pilgrim from Slaughterhouse 5, unstuck in time. Why do this to the story, when the length of the movie doesn't allow the plot to unfold properly? Now I have read several reviews, and I agree with the chap that wrote that this would have been better treated as a serial episodic drama...would even suggest that maybe someone will attempt it- but given the terrible box office, who would have the onions to do so? It might be two bombs, just as there were two in the book...the movie Theo tells us that a "gunpowder store in the neighborhood" killed Fabritius, but it was really a huge explosion that flattened half the town, and the recent explosion in Beirut gave me chills as I realized that the Delft explosion must have been a bit like that. Before I even heard of this book I had read about the mystery and tragedy of the painting, and wondered if Fabritius might have discovered the technique that his possible student, Vermeer used, but was prevented from lasting fame for it by his death...if you haven't seen the doc "Tim's Vermeer" check it out...a non-painter paints a Vermeer using a small mechanical mirror device... Anyway, like Memento, I wondered how this movie would play if one edited it back into chronological order...some films just outsmart themselves.