Shawshank’s redemption director made another Stephen King adaptation at the start of his career
Few directors appreciate and understand Stephen King’s vision like Frank Darabont. This appreciation can be traced to the 1994 box office bomb, which has become a beloved classic “The Shawshank Redemption”, in which Darabont permeates a serious prison drama with captivating dramatic issues. It could be tempting to classify a film like “Shawshank” as a melodramatic, but this sentimental excess is so sincerely conceived that you will find a real depth in the evolving story. After all, it is one of King’s most optimistic non -horror stories, because everything comes down to the beauty of human ingenuity and our innate ability to develop despite external resistance.
Five years later, Darabont approached “The Green Mile” through a similar lens, obtaining its consumer success and four Oscar nominations. But Darabont’s true potential as a director follows to bring King to life was revealed with “The Mist”, which manages to be more heartbreaking than its living source material. There is also more “the mist” than the unexpected end of Downer who makes him heartbreaking (although the story is better for that!), Like the interpretation by Darabont of the themes of the film remains refreshing and honest. Even apart from the manufacture of the adaptations of Banger Stephen King, Darabont turned out to be a competent horror screenwriter, having contributed to gender titles like “The Blob” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors”.
Darabont’s fascination for King’s work, however, preceded “Shawshank”, because the director also directed a short film based on King in 1983. This story was “The woman in the room”, which was part of the King 1978 short night collection “(which also does not understand tales as” Children of the Corn “and” The Lawnmower Be you just looked at if you don’t do it. “So let’s talk about” the woman in the room “.
Darabont’s wife in the room is as intensely melancholy as King’s news
The heart of the King “The Woman in the Room” is remorse powered by sorrow. The story takes place from Johnny’s point of view, a man who is forced to look at his mother in terminal phase is gradually wasting. After spending endless hours near his hospital bed and saw his business with immense pain, Johnny makes the decision difficult to put an end to his suffering. However, this unimaginable burden weighs heavily on his soul. It is a painful and melancholy story about the loss, where any impulse to prevent new suffering from a loved one is thwarted by the horror inherent in the act (and the guilt that accompanies it).
Darabont was at the beginning of the twenty when he read this news in motion in King’s “Night Shift” collection, after which he sent the author a letter asking for permission to adapt him. After obtaining King’s approval, Darabont designed a slow combustion version with love that ends with a frightening dream sequence, highlighting his gift to make a brand through unforgettable images. When we see Johnny (Michael Cornelison) try to use one of his customers in the law firm to better understand what it is to kill someone, the most subtle aspects of his ethical dilemma are clear in the most heartbreaking way. Now, if you look at “The Woman in the Room” today, its limits as a low -budget student film could be obvious. All the same, the artistic talent of Darabont as a filmmaker shines, because many is made in just 30 minutes.
It is clear that Darabont simply gets King’s impulses as a storyteller, and this is better understood in this declaration that he made on the greatest love of the latter for the human condition and his many virtues and faults (via Far Out magazine):
“Stephen is a very old -fashioned storyteller, in the best sense of being old -fashioned. King likes people; you can see him in his writing. He likes their nobility and their weaknesses; he likes the ways they can excel and the ways they can collapse and fall … He is an analyst of the human soul, if you want, like all the best happy.”
Directly on. If you like Darabont’s cinema, then his “wife in the room” is a must, because he gives a solid overview of the daring creative voice that he is today.
