Today I decided to talk about one of my all-time favorite books, and the pretty decent adaptation they made based off it: Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity.
I always liked this adaptation despite the liberties that it takes with its source text. But before we go into the changes, let’s look at what stays the same.
Our main character, Rob (from London in the book, Chicago in the film), owns a record store where he works with his two “friends,” Dick and Barry. Dick is a quiet introvert who enjoys “sad bastard music,” as Barry puts it. Barry is a loud, obnoxious rock n’ roller, played in the film by Jack Black.
The temptation with Black is to let him play himself, which he does to a degree here. But it doesn’t really hurt the story too much. In fact, it’s pretty believable that had Black not rose to prominence, he would’ve ended up a Barry.
But back to Rob. Rob has just broken up with his girlfriend Laura and he is reconnecting with girlfriends of the past, trying to make sense of his own inadequacies.
In the book, and in the film, he breaks the fourth wall pretty regularly. Not in a meta way, but more like a comic book character might. In the film this is achieved by cutaways and voice-over. In the novel it’s done fairly easily because the novel is in first person.
I think the way this movie breaks the curse of the voice-over is by choosing lines from the book that are actually insightful and witty. Seems like a pretty straight forward concept, but leave it to every writer ever to fuck that up.
So anyway, Rob and Laura stay broken up for most of the film until the climax where Laura’s father dies and she and Rob get back together because they are at point in their lives where they are too weak to go on single. Not exactly a happy ending, but it has optimism.
In the book Rob realizes that Laura is indeed the girl for him and goes about improving his lifestyle and maturing so that they can be together. He decides to go back to pursuing DJing as a career instead.
In the film Rob gets back with Laura, but then flirts with the idea of hooking up with another girl, before having maybe one of the best conversations from the entire film about romance, and get this, it isn’t in the book.
But that’s when it goes South. Rob decides to produce some punker kids records and they have a release party and Jack Black’s band plays a Marvin Gaye song, which is Laura and Rob’s song, to close out the movie in a typical Hollywood fashion. Yeah, it really is that “what the fuck?”
The soundtrack is one of the best parts of the movie. By choosing artists that are both relevant and obscure, we’re left with a good portrait of our three heroes, and it doesn’t feel dated (the book came out five years before the movie, which is like 15 years in the music industry). Sensitive Dick likes bands like Belle and Sebastian, Rob loves classics like Bruce Springsteen (who has a cameo in the movie), but is also in touch with contemporary artists like The Beta Band, and Barry loves the seminal stuff, and doesn’t have much respect for anything else.
Ultimately, I think the message stays very much intact, despite the strange ending. And even though he chooses some shit roles, I think Cusack is a great actor (or if not, then likable at least).
Pop culture junkies take note, you have to have a bigger purpose than referencing counter-culture to make a successful book or film, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still reference the shit out of it.
birthofthedrool 