The film version of I Am David is set for a December 3 release, and it is being produced by Walden Media -- the same education-minded folks behind Holes, Around the World in 80 Days, James Cameron's Ghosts of the Abyss and the upcoming Narnia movie -- so I decided to read the original Anne Holm novel, which I just finished. Has anybody else here read it?

The book basically follows a boy as he escapes from a concentration camp and makes his way across several European countries. While reading it, I vaguely remembered that there was SOME sort of recognizable name in the film's credits, but it's an adult name, and there are no adult characters in this book who stick around for more than a chapter or two. So I wondered who this adult name would be playing, and how they would work his character into the film in a way that would both justify him getting the kind of billing he was getting, and not do violence to the story.

And then I checked the IMDB. And immediately, I laughed.

I don't recognize the name of the actor playing David, but Jim Caviezel plays "Johannes", the fellow concentration-camp inmate who teaches David how to speak certain languages, and who gives him certain lessons that help him on his journey; I believe he even inspires David to begin praying to "the God of the still waters and green pastures". I am anticipating lotsa flashbacks, here.

None of this is what made me laugh, though. What made me laugh was the fact that "The Man", i.e. the mean and nasty authority figure that David does not like or trust, [spoiler]but who mysteriously allows David to escape from the concentration camp[/spoiler], is being played by Hristo Shopov -- the actor who played Pontius Pilate in The Passion of the Christ!

Other actors who appear in both The Passion of the Christ and I Am David include Francesco De Vito (Peter / Roberto), Matt Patresi (Janus / Swiss Border Guard) and Paco Reconti (Whipping Guard / Giovani). Shaila Rubin, who plays a vineyard owner in I Am David, was also casting director on The Passion of the Christ (and other religous films!).

So. Some non-sectarian prayers, a positive attitude toward priests and churches, a production company that is currently working on C.S. Lewis's children's stories, and a few of the key players from the most popular Christ film in years -- methinks the Christian media will be all over this one.

Not all the signs are auspicious, though. The IMDB says this film was first shown at Cannes in May 2003 -- seventeen months ago! And although it was scheduled for an October release when I first heard of it, it has now been rescheduled for December. This might indicate a lack of hope for the film on the distributor's part, which in turn might indicate that the film isn't all that good.

One thing I am curious to see is how the film will portray "them". The book, first published in 1963, does not spell out exactly WHOSE concentration camp the boy escapes from, but there are a few clues -- most notably the boy's belief that he cannot trust anything in a book written after 1917 -- that point to the Communists. Since the Soviet era came to an end over a decade ago, I am wondering if the film will be set in the past, or "update" the story somehow, or perhaps pursue a line of abstraction that goes beyond the book's somewhat abstract quality.

I've read the novel,Peter:it was published in Britain as a book for children and I think that it was fairly popular.

: I've read the novel, Peter

Is that because you are David?

Matt

vanity,vanity....all is vanity!

The film opens in the United States (but not Canada) this coming Friday, so I've got to work on my review, but in the meantime, I note that the IMDB says the film opened in the UK three weeks ago. So ... have any of you British blokes seen it yet?

No-sorry,Peter,it doesn't seem to be showing locally...

I think the film is okay. This is definitely one of those cases where I visualized the events of the book somewhat differently from what the filmmakers put on screen. Most importantly, the book is written very much from the boy's point of view, and many things are left unexplained or undescribed if they are the sort of things that the boy would not notice or be aware of; but film, simply by virtue of being a more "objective" medium than literature, must let us look at the boy's world for ourselves, and it cannot take us into his thought processes. What's more, the way some characters describe the boy's face as "sad" or too mature for his age doesn't quite ring true, now that we can see the boy for ourselves; the actor who plays David seems more perplexed than haunted, to me.

The film is VERY explicit about the nature and location of the concentration camp, in a way that the book never was. This is probably just as well, since the book was written back when people would have known about these things, but now it's all a distant memory.

There are a couple of MAJOR coincidences that, I think, might have been in the original book; I'll have to see if I can look those up again before I write my review.

The religious references are reduced to just two: in one scene, the boy prays to St. Elizabeth, because a baker gave him a card with her icon on it; and near the end, the boy enters a church, where he has a flashback to an incident between the Caviezel and Shopov characters that fits so, so well with their characters in The Passion of the Christ.

It seems to me that David has been made just a touch more sympathetic -- he is not quite as cold or distant or defensive as I remember him being in the book -- but oh well. Given that the film was made for children, I think I might be feeling a bit generous with this one.

Ack. Turns out something else about this film deviates from the book. A fact that is made plain from practically the first page of the book has been turned into a mystery that keeps the viewer guessing -- and this has the effect, once again, of creating a distance between the viewer and David that is definitely not there in the original book. In the book, David knows who did such-and-such, and we do too, and he spends his time wondering WHY so-and-so did such-and-such. In the film, David still knows, but we do not, and so we never see the boy wondering WHY so-and-so did such-and-such, and we don't wonder this either, at least not until the film is basically over.

This wasn't obvious to me at first, because I, knowing the book, did not see any ambiguity in those elements of the film that, I now understand, were meant to be ambiguous. But someone else who has seen the film tipped me off to the fact that that ambiguity IS supposed to be there in the film ... and so I have added a "spoiler" patch to my original post to this thread, the post I made nearly two months ago, to cover up a plot point which the film has turned into a spoiler.

My apologies to anyone who read that original post and has not yet read the book.

In other news, I remembered a third religious reference in the film after writing my previous post: in the scene where a family that hosts David says grace before a meal.

from The Phantom Tollbooth's review:



"In films where people meet..."



"there is inevitably the long running-toward-each-other shot..."



"that takes 20 minutes and makes you wonder if they are really coming from Los Angeles and Boston."



"Here, even though there are absences, it is handled well. "

Absences?

"Not to worry. Some cliches can be broken."

Huh? So ... it *does* break the cliche? Or doesn't it? Or, you're saying it's merely *possible* to break this cliche? I'm confused.

"Paul Fieg directs I Am David with flair. This reviewer hopes there will be more from him soon."

Oh. Well, at least he has flair. But, as any fan of Office Space must ask, how many pieces of flair?

The reviewer means that the reunion scene isn't over-dramatized with extended slo-mo running-toward-each-other cuts of the sort parodied in Shrek 2 and, um, The World's Greatest Athlete. (Good night, where did THAT come from???)

Or was this merely another entry in your series on how Christian reviewers need good editors?

Unfortunately, Feig (or one of his actors) makes the opposite mistake from the one identified by the Tollbooth reviewer, shooting a crucial reunion scene that should have devastating emotional power far, far too sedately. I'm with Peter in taking a generous line on the film as a whole, in part I think because I didn't read the book and so I had the opportunity to benefit from the film's gradual revelations. But the ending should have been more emotional.

Just got off the phone with Paul Feig, and one of the interesting things that came out of the conversation was that it was Gibson, not Feig, who "reunited" Caviezel and Shopov -- as well as half a dozen or so other cast members -- who FIRST did I Am David and THEN went on to do The Passion of the Christ.

I could tell it was a bit of a sore subject for him, though he dealt with it humorously. "People think I stole Mel Gibson's cast, and the truth is I gave Mel Gibson his cast. I sort of cast Mel Gibson's film, so I just want to take a little bit of credit for that."

[sound of Jeffrey rushing off to revise his review of the film, which included comments about the "bizarre reunion" of the Passion cast]

SDG wrote:
: Just got off the phone with Paul Feig, and one of the interesting things that came
: out of the conversation was that it was Gibson, not Feig, who "reunited" Caviezel
: and Shopov -- as well as half a dozen or so other cast members -- who FIRST did
: I Am David and THEN went on to do The Passion of the Christ.

Yeah, I figured as much, since the IMDB page for Shopov says it was an assistant director on I Am David who recommended Shopov for the role of Pontius Pilate.

In my own review, I don't come out and say that I Am David was made first, but I do point out that the completed film was shown at Cannes in May 2003, at a time when The Passion was still very much in post-production (they were doing re-shoots for The Passion as late as November 2003, if I'm not mistaken! -- at any rate, Caviezel says he did "more Passion" after shooting The Final Cut and Bobby Jones, which were shot between June and October 2003; and in that same interview, Caviezel says he shot I Am David "right before" all those other films, presumably meaning before The Passion, as well).

My review.

my rather brief review
my li'l talk with Paul Feig

Nice work, Peter.

Ebert:

I sympathize up to a point, but man, that's harsh. [indent]I am sure the movie explains how David became an enemy of the state at his tender age, but the detail escaped me; maybe he inherited his status from his dead parents.[/indent]The movie doesn't tell us why, because David doesn't know himself, and we aren't supposed to know more about David's predicament than he does.