The Woman in Black is a movie based on a very short novel of the same name by Susan Hill. I had already read Hill's other ghost novel, The Man in the Picture, a few years ago, having bought it at Borders who were selling it prominently during the Halloween season. The Woman in Black was listed in Hill's biblography, and her author blurb said that it had been turned into a play that had been running in London since 1983 (second only to Agatha Christie's The Mouse Trap), so I wanted to get my hands on this novel as well. But it was hard to find until recently, when it appeared in bookstores to promote the Daniel Radcliffe movie. I bought a copy and then read it in a little over a week. (I read The Man in the Picture in one night, but that was when I had more time for such things.)
Having read both of Hill's ghost novels (she has written numerous other works, but I haven't read them), I can tell you this: her ghosts (both female) are as malicious, vengeful, spiteful, and above all as unreasonable as hell. (I think it was one of M. R. James's rules of writing ghost stories that the ghost had to be malicious.) They inflict horror and suffering on people who have done nothing to deserve it, simply because they can, and because they have an unslakable thirst for revenge. The ghost in The Man in the Picture, for instance, was in life a young woman who was jilted by her fiancee. She throws such a fit that her family brings in a priest to perform an exorcism. The priest tries, but in the end he throws up his hands and says, "I can't exorcise someone who doesn't want to be exorcised."
The ghost in The Woman in Black is just as intractable, though for a different reason. That much of the novel's spirit is transfered very competently into the movie. From the very first scene, you understand on no uncertain terms that this ghost (played by the ironically named Liz White) is not just angry, she's enraged. An entire small English village lives in terror of her, and she displays no signs of showing mercy. Like the ghost in The Man in the Picture, her thinking seems to be I can't be happy, so neither can anyone else.
But in a great many aspects, the movie departs significantly from the book. For instance, the protagonist in the book, Arthur Kipps, is a young lawyer who is engaged to be married, while in the movie, as played by Radcliffe, he is a young widower whose work as a lawyer has declined in quality since his wife died in childbirth, and his boss is sending him to the remote English village of Crythin Gifford to settle the affairs of a recently deceased old woman as part of a last-ditch effort to salvage his career. There are other differences: in the movie, Sam Daily (played by Ciaran Hinds), one of Crythin Gifford's wealthier citizens, has a wife who is very much in tune with the spirit world, whereas in the book she is not.
On the whole, however, the spirit of the book lives on, whole and healthy, in the film. Both book and film tell an old-fashioned ghost tale that is low on gore and high on chills, made all the more horrifying because the ghost is so unreasoning in her malice -- when your enemy is already dead and can't be stopped by physical means, the only thing you can possibly do is reason with her, and when she won't (or can't) listen to reason, what the hell can you do? There's a scene in the middle of the movie where the audience can see the ghost in the distance, but Arthur is oblivious, and all you can do for the minute or so that this scene endures is wonder what the hell she's going to do to him -- exactly the sort of creepy scene that all ghost tales should have. There are toys and dolls in the nursery of the old woman's house that (with a little help from some very clever photography) are used to significantly up the creep factor. And in the climactic confrontation scene, there was one point where I was genuinely scared (though I didn't scream and jump out of my chair like some of the teenagers who sat nearby).
But since the circumstances of the movie are different from those of the book (especially regarding Arthur's widowhood and his having a son), the movie's ending is likewise different. It's ambiguous, in what might be a happy sort of way. It left me wondering if maybe, just maybe, the Woman in Black was capable of mercy after all.
Having read both of Hill's ghost novels (she has written numerous other works, but I haven't read them), I can tell you this: her ghosts (both female) are as malicious, vengeful, spiteful, and above all as unreasonable as hell. (I think it was one of M. R. James's rules of writing ghost stories that the ghost had to be malicious.) They inflict horror and suffering on people who have done nothing to deserve it, simply because they can, and because they have an unslakable thirst for revenge. The ghost in The Man in the Picture, for instance, was in life a young woman who was jilted by her fiancee. She throws such a fit that her family brings in a priest to perform an exorcism. The priest tries, but in the end he throws up his hands and says, "I can't exorcise someone who doesn't want to be exorcised."
The ghost in The Woman in Black is just as intractable, though for a different reason. That much of the novel's spirit is transfered very competently into the movie. From the very first scene, you understand on no uncertain terms that this ghost (played by the ironically named Liz White) is not just angry, she's enraged. An entire small English village lives in terror of her, and she displays no signs of showing mercy. Like the ghost in The Man in the Picture, her thinking seems to be I can't be happy, so neither can anyone else.
But in a great many aspects, the movie departs significantly from the book. For instance, the protagonist in the book, Arthur Kipps, is a young lawyer who is engaged to be married, while in the movie, as played by Radcliffe, he is a young widower whose work as a lawyer has declined in quality since his wife died in childbirth, and his boss is sending him to the remote English village of Crythin Gifford to settle the affairs of a recently deceased old woman as part of a last-ditch effort to salvage his career. There are other differences: in the movie, Sam Daily (played by Ciaran Hinds), one of Crythin Gifford's wealthier citizens, has a wife who is very much in tune with the spirit world, whereas in the book she is not.
On the whole, however, the spirit of the book lives on, whole and healthy, in the film. Both book and film tell an old-fashioned ghost tale that is low on gore and high on chills, made all the more horrifying because the ghost is so unreasoning in her malice -- when your enemy is already dead and can't be stopped by physical means, the only thing you can possibly do is reason with her, and when she won't (or can't) listen to reason, what the hell can you do? There's a scene in the middle of the movie where the audience can see the ghost in the distance, but Arthur is oblivious, and all you can do for the minute or so that this scene endures is wonder what the hell she's going to do to him -- exactly the sort of creepy scene that all ghost tales should have. There are toys and dolls in the nursery of the old woman's house that (with a little help from some very clever photography) are used to significantly up the creep factor. And in the climactic confrontation scene, there was one point where I was genuinely scared (though I didn't scream and jump out of my chair like some of the teenagers who sat nearby).
But since the circumstances of the movie are different from those of the book (especially regarding Arthur's widowhood and his having a son), the movie's ending is likewise different. It's ambiguous, in what might be a happy sort of way. It left me wondering if maybe, just maybe, the Woman in Black was capable of mercy after all.
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