wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (03/14/85)
(This is a reposting; it was posted during a time when netnews feeds here seemed erratic, and I have never seen any replies or answers, so I fear it never made it out over the net.) WARNING! SPOILERS! Having just seen the movie of "The World According to Garp" on network TV (mid-Feb, actually), I am left with questions I hope netters can answer: 1) What kind of car was it that Garp and his wife had? I mean the cream-colored one that appeared to be something from the 40's? This should have been 1974 or thereabouts, since Garp was born in '44 and he had said that he had just turned 30. 2) The night that his wife comes home after he had been told of her infidelity, and he is gone with the kids to a diner and a movie: how did she get home? The movie had shown her being the one that had that car at the university as her regular transportation, yet that day he had the car at home. (There was never any evidence of having another car, and her phone conversation with her lover implied that she had not just been with him -- that is, he didn't leave her off at home that day [which she would not have allowed to happen, anyway].) So she arrives at home with no previously-set-up explanation of how she got there, such as a mention of carpooling or anything in prior scenes. This seemed a continuity failure to me. 3) The crucial accident -- this was led up to by the earlier scene of Garp and wife coming home and him doing the trick with cutting the ignition and coasting into the driveway. There she said it was "dangerous", which of course presages the accident. But what is "dangerous" about it? All he did was cut the motor and coast the final "n" feet to stop in his own driveway. When the accident happens, he does this again to please the kids, and hits the lover's car. Why would this have been a serious accident at all? Since he was coasting, and was coming UPHILL on his driveway, he could not have been moving very fast. Even if the rain made his brakes fade, he would have ended up with a fender-bender, whiplash and various minor injuries for the unsupported kids, himself, and his wife & her lover, NOT serious injuries to everyone and the death of one child! The accident scene even clearly showed his headlights coming on again as he entered the driveway and his viewpoint of seeing the lover's station wagon there. He could have stopped or at least swerved and missed it. This badly-staged accident spoiled the whole recovery-period scenes for me; they could have simply staged it better to make serious injury inevitable -- I wonder why they did not. 4) I missed the credit for the seaside house, which both my wife and I admired. Anyone know where it is, and if it is a publicly-accessible building, like a resort? I haven't read the book, but am thinking about doing so, due to seeing the movie. Any comments as to the relationships between the two? (E.G., is the movie "true" to the book, or a "travesty" of it, or somewhere in between?) Thanks for your answers! Will Martin USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA
ron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (03/15/85)
> Having just seen the movie of "The World According to Garp" on network TV > (mid-Feb, actually), I am left with questions I hope netters can answer: Try reading the book, it's much more detailed and covers a lot of points glossed over or done badly in the movie. > the accident. But what is "dangerous" about it? All he > did was cut the motor and coast the final "n" feet to stop in his own > driveway. When the accident happens, he does this again to please the kids, > and hits the lover's car. Why would this have been a serious accident at all? > Since he was coasting, and was coming UPHILL on his driveway, he could not > have been moving very fast. Even if the rain made his brakes fade, he > would have ended up with a fender-bender, whiplash and various minor injuries > for the unsupported kids, himself, and his wife & her lover, NOT serious > injuries to everyone and the death of one child! The accident scene even > clearly showed his headlights coming on again as he entered the driveway > and his viewpoint of seeing the lover's station wagon there. He could have > stopped or at least swerved and missed it. This badly-staged accident > spoiled the whole recovery-period scenes for me; they could have simply > staged it better to make serious injury inevitable -- I wonder why they > did not. Will, I think you have a very naive view about auto safety. We was going at a fairly good clip down the hill before hitting the driveway and the legnth of your average suburban driveway does not seem long enough to react to a "can't happen" condition of an unexpected car in the way. As for the power of impact killing the unprotected small child in the back seat and causing superfical injury to Garp (and injuries to his wife due to the rather compromising position she was in), I invite you to hang around your local hospital emergency room. For example, just the other day I had to take an 18 year old girl to the hospital with a broken jaw after her Chevy Impala drifted off the road. Didn't hit anything, wasn't an abrupt stop, but enough to cause her to flail forward and hit either the winshield or the steering wheel. She was not wearing safety belts, fortunately the 8 month old baby in the car was in a car seat (recent state law) and was uninjured. It doesn't take much of an impact to cause spinal injury or enough insidious internal bleeding to cause irreversable shock. -Ron