Murder on the Orient Express - Lost in Adaptation
Added 2023-07-16 07:37:44 +0000 UTCSorry about the distracting border on this one. I've been have a lot of trouble with copyright recently :S
Comments
I'm only catching up now on videos (real life blahblah), and I'm one of those people that has read every Agatha Christie murder, many of the multiple times. And I have a lot of feelings about ALL of the Orient Express adaptations that have been done, many of them not that positive. (Including the Suchet adaptation. I know. Shocking.) But this one was... a lot. First, Poirot is written as having what *could* be read as a form of OCD; he liked symmetry, his fanaticism for neatness in things was the key clue in his first mystery. However, as you pointed out, he was never unintentionally rude. (also, OCD does not inherently go with the ~vaguely autistic~ handwavey neurodivergent bs that I got from this film) Poirot was very aware of class, position, politics, and nuance of human interaction. Tbh though... the egg thing as part of his neurodivergence was what really made me angry. In the books, he and Hastings have a running gag about how chickens have not yet learned to lay square eggs. He does, at one point, bemoan that the eggs are different sizes in his breakfast... AND THEN EATS THEM. Because as he says "le bon dieu" has made it so. The very concept that he wouldn't eat eggs if they were different sizes, let alone that he would ask servants to go haring across a whole city looking for eggs of "proper size" is absolutely not in his character. I know it's ultimately a minor thing, but the egg scene in the first moments of the movie just put me right out of the story, and I never got back in again. I was willing to have fun with the movie and enjoy it, imperfections and all. But making that change, and taking to such extremes just ruined it for me. I totally get guilty pleasure movies! No judgement there for me.
Lucy R
2023-09-10 21:59:52 +0000 UTCWatch the 1974 movie, it's so much better
Shani Gribben
2023-08-16 09:44:22 +0000 UTCI confess that this movie made me not want to read Christie's books. I know, I know: "Never judge a book by its movie." But geez...Branagh! Dial down the 'stache and action hero nonsense, please.
Georgina Toland
2023-08-10 16:16:05 +0000 UTC
