Disgrace
Paladin
The Other Man
Image Entertainment
J.M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace has been made into a film that, in good measure, is faithful to it. Along with the admiration that obviously drew them to the book, the film-makers had to deal with some heavy data. Coetzee is a Nobel laureate; Disgrace won a lofty British award called the Booker Prize; an English newspaper poll lately named Disgrace as the best novel of the last twenty-five years. Aesthetically dubious though such tags are, nonetheless the book has been a favorite of many good readers over many years.
It took courage as well as talent to take on that load of prestige. The adapter, Anna-Maria Monticelli, and the director Steve Jacobs, her husband--both Australian--must have known early on of still another problem. In a salient way, the more faithful they were to the book, the greater risk they might be taking. Coetzee's protagonist is a difficult man who, at the start, disdains the approval of others, does what he wants to do, and disregards as far as possible the world's opinion. This is not a pattern for a cinematic hero, no matter how serious the picture. Yet the picture holds to it as long as Coetzee does.
The film-makers had the extraordinary help of John Malkovich in the role. He has previously played characters with at least a touch of tacit superiority, and the qualities of this role almost seem designed to fit what we already know about him. It is the sort of juncture that makes us think the universe was designed so that this actor and this role should some day meet--like Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or Paul Newman in The Verdict. Besides, there is a stylistic kinship, I'd say, between Coetzee and Malkovich. In the author's prose, adjectives are sparse: part of his power is his ability to be both strong and subtle without flourishes. Malkovich's acting, so to speak, also has few adjectives.
David Lurie is a middle-aged professor of literature at a Cape Town university. Twice divorced, he patronizes a particular prostitute every week, and after she becomes unavailable he starts an affair with one of his students, Melanie Isaacs. She is more overwhelmed than impassioned, and evidently she tells others about it. Her boyfriend taunts David; her father complains. The university reacts predictably to the eventual scandal. After an inquiry in which David is both frank and unapologetic, he is allowed to resign.
He is also a writer and composer, and he decides to visit his daughter Lucy in the country, to stay with her a while and work there on a project he has been cherishing--a chamber opera about Byron. Lucy's place is in the mountains, where she has a kennel and a market garden of vegetables and flowers. Her neighbor, a fortyish black man named Petrus, helps her as gardener and dog man. She knows her father's character very well, and she welcomes him to stay with her, writing and composing perhaps, while he thinks about his situation and his future.
Their lives are suddenly and horribly altered one day by a brutal assault. Three black youths kill the dogs, rape Lucy, and try to immolate David. Police steps are taken to apprehend the assailants, with few immediate results. Here follows the most complex and influential passage in the story. Contrary to David's expectation, Lucy does not want to move away from this relatively dangerous region. She says that she would feel defeated and would always carry that defeat with her. Unspoken, too, but perceptible, is some sense of her connection in responsibility with post-apartheid South Africa, heightened by her friendship with Petrus--plus the strangely involving discovery that one of the assailants may be a relative of his. David argues with her: she is determined to stay.
