(UK/Germany, 96 min.)
Dir. Pascal Chaumeil, Writ. Jack Thorne
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Aaron Paul, Imogen
Poots.
Nick Hornby’s novel A
Long Way Down is one of those irresistible books that can save your life.
The film adaptation by Pascal Chaumeil, however, is one of those dreadful films
that kill a good book. A great cast goes to waste in this staggeringly disappointing
misfire. A Long Way Down, the movie,
jumps from the ledge of greatness and falls with a splat into the abyss of
adaptation hell. It’s a long way down from its potential and the result ain’t
pretty.
A Long Way Down trips on the very point over which many readers of the Hornby novel might have struggled to overcome. The premise—four strangers form an unlikely support group after they all make the same plan to commit suicide by jumping off the same building on New Year’s Eve—is wildly convoluted and requires an active suspension of disbelief to make the sardonic Hornby prose miraculous. What works in print doesn’t always work in drama, and A Long Way Down feels forced and false from the very first scene. Even the most generous of viewers might be unwilling to buy it.
One noticeable misstep in the adaptation is the film’s
departure from the mosaic collage of Hornby’s prose. A Long Way Down, the film, offers each of the four wannabe lemmings—Martin
(Pierce Brosnan), Maureen (Toni Collette), Jess (Imogen Poots), and J.J. (Aaron
Paul)—their own perspective, but it essentially quarters the film into one
linear story that changes viewpoints at very increment of twenty-five percent.
The book, on the other hand, criss-crosses the stories of all four characters
at random, often shifting time frames and repeating incidents from different
perspectives, which affords significantly more insight into the characters
personality and psychology. Adaptations are by no means bound to replicate
their sources, but the screenplay by Jack Thorne streamlines the necessary
balance of depth and whimsy to make the farfetched premise work. The movie A Long Way Down never digs into the
characters and instead presents them as one homogenous cause.
The blasé structure betrays the film almost immediately, for
the initial scene in which the four characters meet on the rooftop feels flat,
rushed, and contrived. There isn’t any insight into the characters’ reasons for
wanting to kill themselves. The film opens with Martin’s story as Brosnan
narrates the fallen media personality’s motivation for jumping, but it then
brings the trio of Maureen, Jess, and J.J. onto the rooftop as trio of sitcommy
stock characters. They say they want to die, but nobody learns why. The film
gives nothing other than a contrived premise for the audience to swallow. Everyone
but Martin is paper-thin at the crucial moment when A Long Way Down asks the audience to take a leap of faith, and it
simply isn’t possible to accept the convolutedness of the story.
Chaumeil certainly keeps the Hornby-ish lightness afoot as A Long Way Down tells a frequently
humorous and cheery tale about finding the will to live. It’s awfully shallow,
though, as Martin, Maureen, Jess, and J.J. trade Dr. Phil-ish remarks about
finding the light in their lives. Everything is told through on-the-nose
dialogue or snippets of dialogue lifted straight from the book. A Long Way Down is far too simple for
the complicated balancing of life and death, especially since the story of the so-called
“Toppers’ House Four” finds such a sunny outlook in the face of death. The film
sells the subject short, almost tackily so, as it never really confronts the
reasons why the characters want(ed) to die. A holiday at the beach and an
appearance with an overeager talk show host (Rosamund Pike) suffices. The one-dimensionality
of A Long Way Down almost seems
disrespectful to anyone who has ever reached the point of despair that might
drive the four characters to jump.
The film is awfully safe and sugarcoated in its approach to
death, too, so A Long Way Down rarely
finds the catharsis or affirmation of life to which the story should build. It’s
disappointing to see such a great source receive such shallow treatment, especially
since the cast does its best effort to bring A Long Way Down to life. Brosnan, Collette, Poots, and Paul are
equally likable, but there just isn’t much for them to work with.
The only real
emotional resonance comes fleetingly in the final quarter of the story when the
film assumes Maureen’s perspective and gives her a taste of the loneliness and
emptiness—or the “helplessness” she provides as her one-worded backstory in the
first chapter—that brings the value of life to the forefront of the film. By
that time, however, A Long Way Down
struggles to invest the audience in the characters and lets them perish by a
slow, suffocating death. At least suicide is painless (as the song says)!
Rating: ★★ (out of ★★★★★)
A Long Way Down is now available on home video.
