& # 8211 ; Film Vs. Text Comparison Essay, Research Paper

The Polanski movie Death and the Maiden is a fantastic and intelligent reading of Ariel Dorfman? s human rights job drama. Polanski has produced, in this movie, an exceeding piece of way, in which his ain personal, emotional input is apparent. The chief subject of the drama is an highly personal 1 for both dramatist ( and scriptwriter ) and manager. Both Dorfman and Polanski have had to face and fly the horrors of absolutism and human rights misdemeanors: Dorfman in Chile, under General Augusto Pinochet, and Polanski in Poland under the Nazis. But despite this similarity in past experience, important differences exist between the original drama and the movie. Apart from the specific techniques of illuming and composing, whose possibilities are greatly widened in the medium of movie, we see differences in both the different accents and implied point of views on the assorted subjects that the drama touches on and, possibly more significantly, the manner the characters are portrayed.

While the old construct of “ whatever doesn? T putting to death you makes you stronger ” is present in both the drama and the movie ( peculiarly in the word picture of Paulina ) , it is much more prevailing in the film. We can see Paulina? s strength from the start. As she strides confidently around the house and violently cryings off a piece of poulet, the suggestion that she is ill-sorted to the domestic place which she has evidently been forced into by the side effects of her traumatic experience need non be made any clearer. Although possessing singular strength in both texts, the film shows a much stronger, about wholly masculine Paulina. This Paulina has been about wholly defeminized by her ordeal, physically, symbolised by the scarred chest and her desire to “ follow ” a kid, which besides serves as a glance of the vulnerable component of muliebrity in her character that still remains. Throughout the turn of verbal jousting that goes on in the gap scene Paulina is able to keep her land much more steadfastly than she appears to make in the drama. In Polanski? s version of the scene she really manages to utilize her domestic function to derive power in the statement, ferociously flinging the dinner in the bin. Weaver? s powerful moving conveys the unmistakable tenseness associated with an unbelievable sum of suppressed choler. It is non until the undermentioned scenes, when she is eventually confronted with the cause of that choler, nevertheless, that we see its full magnitude and destructive potency.

In the surreal, subdued lighting of her sleeping room Paulina is shaken by a queerly upseting laugh upon recognizing Roberto Miranda? s voice as that of her tormenter. This minute sees the birth or manifestation of another aspect of Paulina? s character, the portion of Paulina? s head that fantasized about making to her torturers what they had done to her. This is the incredibly unreasonable Paulina ; she is a Fury, a fabulous divinity, the incarnation of retribution, insusceptible to male logic or timeserving, careerist rationalization. Polanski makes Paulina throw the auto over the cliff-edge. In making this she is non merely destructing a phallic symbol, and therefore sabotaging Roberto? s gender and any claims he has on sexual laterality or high quality, she is destructing a perfect symbol of the male thirst for power and control, and the matter-of-fact logic to which her demand for retaliation has been sacrificed, into the

space, helter-skelter abysm that defies all these rules, and unimpeachably swallows it up. In making this she breaks the railing, civilized society has created to guard itself from that pandemonium, leting those forces of suppressed fury to get away. Polanski? s Paulina re-enters the house, a different individual. Illuminated by typically horror-movie-style lighting. Her aggressively focussed face? lit by an about electric blue with rough shadows cast across it, foregrounding her characteristics? contrasts strongly against the blurry background. Having bound Roberto, she is physically empowered by the gun ( P: “ ? every bit shortly as I drop the gun all treatment will discontinue? you? ll use your strength to win the statement? ” ) to move sharply. The gun is another phallic symbol ; therefore much of this aggressive behavior takes on a sexual quality.

Unlike Dorfman? s drama, Polanski does non seek to do us accept, without a battle, the simple truth that to victimise our tormenters is to drop to their degree. We get the general feeling that Polanski is much more sympathetic to Paulina and the type of justness her hurts call out for. In Polanski? s movie version, far from being driven by blind fury, Paulina is the lone character that takes duty for her ain actions, and cares small for the self-interested considerations of effects. She has already faced the worst effects possible, and seems, by that experience, to hold acquired a terrorizing emancipation from the restraints they can enforce. While Dorfman gives Gerardo? s logical pragmatism some acceptance, projecting him as the voice of ground, for Polanski he stands for the blissfully incognizant certainty of rules untested by experience. Gerardo? s clich & # 233 ; vitamin D axioms are the luxuries of a adult male who has ne’er faced the world of his enemy? s power.

However, the movie is non a justification of Paulina? s actions, a simple retaliation phantasy. Despite the satisfaction of Paulina? s trade name of justness, she can? t, when faced with Roberto? s honest confession and the fact that he excessively is human and has his ain grounds for making what he did, force herself to kill him. In fact I am non certain that killing him was her purpose when she lead him to the drop, she understood the about unbearably painful truth when she foremost decided that “ ? no retaliation [ could ] satisfy [ her ] ? ” For all the fury contained in the movie ( significantly more than the drama ) , and its portraiture of Paulina, there is a certain weakness to the movie, and a upseting truth in its unsolved stoping. One might reason that Polanski? in doing Roberto give an overall much more echt confession at the terminal of the movie than Dorfman provides in the drama? is falling into the Hollywood trap of offering a simple declaration to its many moral struggles and therefore doing it accessible to a wider audience. I believe this circumstance serves a really of import intent, emphasized by its apposition with the really last scene. It underlines this of import powerlessness in the movie? s stoping: the fact that despite her holding faced her devils Paulina has been for good changed by her ordeal. And although she may hold “ ? rescued [ her ] Schubert? ” in that she can now sit in a concert hall and listen to the music, the music will ne’er be able to state her the same things once more. And even if Roberto is non at that place in individual ( as he is in the concluding scene ) he will ever be as a obscure presence, a “ surreal ” shadow on her psyche.