Ah, the perils of adapting a much-loved book which had the graceless audacity to become an international bestseller, thus shining the spotlight even more glaringly onto director Olivia Newman and screenwriter Lucy Alibar’s efforts to turn into what was no doubt expected to be a cinematic triumph.
It’s bad enough for moviemakers bringing any book to the big screen since many (though thankfully not all) avid book readers, and as the increasing book sales of late attest, their numbers remain legion, can be at times disturbingly intolerant of anyone daring to bring their beloved story to life in another medium.
On one level it makes sense; they have invested a great deal of time and emotion into reading the story, and subsequently falling in love with the themes and characters, and feel a certain proprietorial territoriality about what might happen to the narrative and those who occupy it.
Well-intentioned though this love of a particular book might be, and as a fervently enthusiastic reader myself I can attest that it almost always comes from a good place, it does make things challenging for any moviemaker, especially when the book is as iconically high profile as Where the Crawdads Sing.
It’s hard to tell though whether the poor reviews for the Reese Witherspoon-backed film are driven by book lovers’ disdain or the simple fact that while the 1950s/60s-set Where the Crawdads Sing is a wholly lovable that perfectly captures some of the emotional beauty and vulnerability of the book, it lacks much of the grit that made the book by Delia Owens such an emotional blow.
It is, after all, not only the story of a young girl left alone in the marsh near the town of Barkley Cove in North Carolina, after her mother then siblings then abusive father all abandon her in turn, but of the way in which the world treats her, able only to see her difference and not a child needing love and community.
While that aspect of the book makes it into the film, with various community members treating Catherine “Kya” Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones as a young woman / Jojo Regina as a girl) like she is the plague with muddied face and shoeless feet, it is robbed of much its impact by a screenplay that gives vent to the town’s unfathomable disdain for Kya but with nothing like the cruel ferocity of the book.
Having said that, however, it becomes readily apparent that Kya is an outcast, and while some people like sweet Tate Taylor John Smith as a young man / Luke David Blumm as a boy) who loves her devotedly though far from perfectly at first, and surrogate parents James “Jumpin” and Mabel Madison (Sterling Mercer, Jr. and Charlene “Michael” Hyatt respectively), who own the local marsh-situated store, have her back, many others, thoughtlessly and small-mindedly do not.
Even so, the film fails often to convey the true venom of how the town treats Kya, effectively driving her from the local store, treating like an oddity when ventures into town, and overall, acting as if she is the harbinger of all evil in the locale, even though as anyone with an open heart and clear mind can see, she is the one of the few people in Barkley Cove who actually has any humanity.
Also skipped over is the graphic nature of the domestic abuse which drives Kya’s mother and her brothers and sisters to flee the marsh, and the horrific way in which she is eventually treated by upper middle class town member, Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) who treats her like a possession, a dirty sexual secret that rests behind the facade as a fine upstanding member of the community.
Clearly, the only one who upstanding in any way, again besides Tate and the Madisons, is Kya herself, who is a talented artist of the natural world, a young woman who despite the great pain inflicted on her by her father and Chase, remains sweetly open to what the world might offer her when it has a mind to be kind and inviting.
Holding all of these underrepresented darker but necessary to fully understanding what has shaped Kya in a thoroughly unorthodox and invisibly lonely upbringing elements together is the court case that acts as the supporting scaffolding for the flashbacks which fill in the life of a woman who, based on bigotry, assumption and hearsay, is put on trial for the murder of Chase Andrews whose found by two young boys on a bike ride through the marsh.
While using the court case as a frame for the wider narrative is a cinematic masterstroke, allowing Where the Crawdads Sing to balance the present and past tenses to often informatively moving extent, it does mean that some of the book’s most affecting aspects, including the soul searing way in which Kya effectively raises herself and suffers ridicule and scorn for simply not being like everyone else, get lost in the shuffle, brought to the narrative fore but never for long enough.
These failings aside, however, Where the Crawdads Sing still retains much of its emotional power and punch, thanks to superlative performances by Edgar-Jones and Regina who invest the required amount and then some of vulnerability, loss and pain into Kya, a figure who stands at the centre of a story that highlights the very worst of human nature but also the very best, proof that while great societal ill can harm and wound a person, almost fatally it seems, those who choose the better angels of their nature can also bring healing and a lifelong sense of community, love and inclusion.
Much of the deep love between Tate and Kya, and the great hurt and poor judgement that nearly dooms them as a couple, makes its way into Where the Crawdads Sing the film, giving the book a central emotional anchor, albeit one not as powerfully expressed as in the book.
As adaptations go, Where the Crawdads Sing is still deeply enjoyable, rich in stunning cinematography and a powerful sense of place, and while it does leave an emotional mark in ways that harken back to the immense power of the book, it doesn’t quite reach the impressive heights of the novel on which it is based, thanks to a structure which, while it serves it well in part, ends up dominating proceedings to the point where the events that shape Kya and that influence the court proceedings of the literary last third of the story, don’t get the attention they need.
It doesn’t even remotely doom the movie, which is worth seeing on the big screen if only to glory in the evocative landscapes of the North Carolina marshes and the pain and the joy of Kya’s life expressed against them, but it does mean that the film is a lesser creation to the novel which remains the definitive version of this beautifully harsh but redemptive story.