"Generation P" is one of those books that is fantastic as a prose work and that one never suspects could be adequately filmed for a movie. The makers of the cinematic version clearly knew how ambitious they were being, working with this source, a lot of money and a lot of anticipation. The result is very, very good. But it doesn't capture some areas of where the source shines, while being very closely drawn from it and so inviting comparison.
It looks fantastic, both in terms of the creation of a fantasized nineteen-nineties within the look of physical objects and costumes in the film, and in the realization of excellent visual imagery to represent some of the less literal matter going on.
As a film, it's well timed, well edited, and well scripted such that it moves at a quick pace and is frequently insightful. But one of the strengths of the source novel was its willingness to philosophize at length, and to delve into its hallucinogenic descriptions. The film, in its desire to adapt the whole book, films a lot of events without the accompanying matter than justifies their inclusion. Thus, I think they miss a lot of the most important and worthwhile matter of the novel.
We see Babylen eating hallucinogenic mushrooms and later LSD, but we only skim over the effects of them. We see how he runs into Blo at his new job, but we have no time to be introduced to who Blo is. We see that Yeltsin is being 3-D modeled and get some satiric value from that, but we don't get the full explanation that makes the idea so important and powerful.
Most importantly, we hear the hallucination of Che Guevara speaking, but he gets only a few lines spoken very quickly, and we almost miss the discussion (deeply emphasized in the book) of the three human impulses -- oral, anal, and wow -- and how they relate to commercialism.
Missing the emphasis on that feels like missing the point somehow. They kept (sometimes line for line) the novels satires of commercials, but not of commercialism -- and therefore made the work considerably less potent. I read that several firms were ironically given product placement in order to help finance the film; I hope that didn't affect any editorial decisions to weaken the message.
Overall quite an impressive film, but one that invites comparison with the source, and then fails to capture its spirit or satiric power in several key areas.
It looks fantastic, both in terms of the creation of a fantasized nineteen-nineties within the look of physical objects and costumes in the film, and in the realization of excellent visual imagery to represent some of the less literal matter going on.
As a film, it's well timed, well edited, and well scripted such that it moves at a quick pace and is frequently insightful. But one of the strengths of the source novel was its willingness to philosophize at length, and to delve into its hallucinogenic descriptions. The film, in its desire to adapt the whole book, films a lot of events without the accompanying matter than justifies their inclusion. Thus, I think they miss a lot of the most important and worthwhile matter of the novel.
We see Babylen eating hallucinogenic mushrooms and later LSD, but we only skim over the effects of them. We see how he runs into Blo at his new job, but we have no time to be introduced to who Blo is. We see that Yeltsin is being 3-D modeled and get some satiric value from that, but we don't get the full explanation that makes the idea so important and powerful.
Most importantly, we hear the hallucination of Che Guevara speaking, but he gets only a few lines spoken very quickly, and we almost miss the discussion (deeply emphasized in the book) of the three human impulses -- oral, anal, and wow -- and how they relate to commercialism.
Missing the emphasis on that feels like missing the point somehow. They kept (sometimes line for line) the novels satires of commercials, but not of commercialism -- and therefore made the work considerably less potent. I read that several firms were ironically given product placement in order to help finance the film; I hope that didn't affect any editorial decisions to weaken the message.
Overall quite an impressive film, but one that invites comparison with the source, and then fails to capture its spirit or satiric power in several key areas.