Too "Perfect" to be "Dorian Gray"
By: Yanan Bu
Issue date: 2/8/10 Section: Opinion
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At least six Dorian Grays came out on the big silver screen since Oscar Wilde wrote his novel "The Portrait of Dorian Gray". But most of them failed to touch people's hearts as Oscar Wilde did. Was that because the visual movies could not describe the magical and magnificent world expressed in the novel?
If you have seen this new "Dorian Gray", you would say "no." The scene in this movie was really fantastic and gothic. However, it could not save the movie from being a piece of junk.
Let us talk about the movie since Dorian came back from his more than ten years' vacation, because from there nobody can save the movie to be a lousy slice even if Oscar Wilde was still alive.
Years after poor Basil Hallward's death, Dorian came back to London with the same youthful face. He also came back with repentance and virtue! What happened to him during his vacation? We could never know even if we cared about it since the scriptwriter never told us.
All right, that was not the worst part of this movie. The worst part was when Dorian and Lord Henry Wotton walked out of the room, and then saw Henry's daughter. Here came a kind of romantic love story which Oscar Wilde would never write because of his thespian style.
Yes, Dorian fell in love with a pure lady in the novel, but his purpose was to pretend his repentance, and to cheat everyone including himself. However, this pure lady was just an image of purity which Dorian wanted to catch, own and tear. Did Dorian love her? Dorian just loved his own feeling.
In the movie, Dorian really loved Emily Wotton with his whole heart. He even wanted to restart life with her. Emily Wotton was not a pure image. She was a real character created by the scriptwriter to move the audience. However, this character was really needless.
Did Wilde need such a character in his novel to express his purpose to destroy a beautiful heart? Did the audience need such a character to make the movie a "love story"? Did we need Dorian Gray this corrupt narcissus to be a GOOD man at the end?
NO!
We don't need a comfort story with a worthless ending. If Wilde's Dorian Gray was a beautiful tragedy, this movie was a boring one.
Yes, we all like to see happy endings, but "Dorian Gray" can never become a happy ending story. Dorian Gray was born to represent ugly beautiful faces. He was born to destroy, and to be loved and hated by people. He was not a man who could run away from the devil.
In the novel, Dorian wanted to destroy the portrait to kill his conscience, but death came to himself. In the movie, "Dorian Gray" wanted to destroy the portrait before he died. He was like an angel when he said "with my whole heart" to Emily. But Wilde's Dorian was no angel he was a corrupt narcissus.
This Dorian was too perfect to be "Dorian Gray" in Oliver Parker's adaptation of a literary classic.