Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and scary images
By Derrick Bang
Some children’s books — even
incredibly popular ones — are structured in a way that resists big-screen
adaptation.
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| As Conor (Lewis MacDougall) grows more concerned about his mother's increasingly frail condition, the visits from a parable-spinning monster become more serious, intense ... and dangerous. |
(Consider, as one of the most
famous examples, how much time has passed since Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time debuted back in 1963.
We finally have an adaptation scheduled for release in the spring of 2018.)
A Monster Calls was published in 2011; the
illustrated children’s novel — story by Patrick Ness, art by Jim Kay — went on
to win Britain’s prestigious Carnegie and Greenaway medals. It’s a poignant,
deeply thoughtful and at times elliptical fantasy about a boy working his way
through extreme grief; as such, it’s also an instructive and extremely clever
parable for readers seeking similar solace.
The book has a sobering
back-story, having been conceived by British author Siobhan Dowd during her
unsuccessful battle against breast cancer. She died before being able to write
it; her editor passed Dowd’s notes along to Ness.
It’s a sensitive and delicate
tale, enhanced in great part by Kay’s often ragged — but always beautiful —
black-and-white illustrations. The mere attempt to bring such a story to the big
screen is audacious; that director J.A. Bayona has done such an exemplary job,
with Ness adapting his own book, is nothing short of remarkable.
We meet 13-year-old Conor
O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall, in a sublime starring debut) as he wakens from what
obviously has become a recurring dream: one in which the landscape surrounding
his home is rent asunder, and he’s unable to save his terrified mother
(Felicity Jones) from falling into a bottomless pit. Conor always wakens just
as he loses his grip on her clutching hand.
As a typical day then begins, we
note unusual independence: Conor makes his own breakfast, which he eats alone;
he runs a load of wash and dresses for school. In the background, at one point,
we hear a feeble, deeply congested cough. The inference is easy.
School, sadly, is its own waking
nightmare. Although isolated at the rear of his various classrooms — teachers
giving him a wide berth, making allowances for his solemn failure to
participate — Conor nonetheless is an ongoing target of the sadistically cruel
school bully, Harry (James Melville, impressively nasty). Then it’s back home,
where his mother, wan but feigning cheer, is up and about. They share a movie,
but she’s unable to stay awake to the conclusion.
