Carrie
(1976; Brian DePalma) is a film expressing the famous novel by
Stephen King. It stars Sissy Spacek, who displays the mousey,
innocent behavior of Carrietta (Carrie) White, aside her religiously
wicked mother, Margaret White, played by Piper Laurie. It shows a few
days in the life of Carrie through showing the misery of high school,
the cruelty of juveniles, and the difficulties of beginning
womanhood, while also showcasing the awkwardness, weird happenings,
and backward lifestyle that are all part of who Carrie White is. This
film expresses the fears that we have of people who are different
that may, or may not, exist in the world.
There are several
differences between the film and the book, but not big enough
instances to be a completely unrelated theme between the two. The
film makes Carrie out to be too scared to stand up to Momma until
nearly the end, while the book has Carrie threaten her near the
beginning. The rocks fall down over them at the end of the film on
top of the burning house, while the book has Carrie causing the rocks
to fall in anger towards Momma to destroy the home. The film has
Carrie only blow up the school and kill Chris and her boyfriend in
her van, while the book has her destroy the entire town, according
to a rumor. They are only little differences, but they make the film
carry out in a very different fashion than the book intended.
However, it still conveyed the same general idea of the story line.
This is expressed many ways
in the dialog that is used, or not used in certain instances. Near
the beginning of the book, Carrie tells her mother these things all
in one conversation: “Momma you let me go,” “I'll make the
stones come again, Momma,” and “You suck!”1
There is nothing like this in the film. This is because the film
tries to convey Carrie as a helpless little lamb stuck in a lion's
den, while the book shows her as a girl who has a miserable life, but
knows completely well what she is saying and doing when she uses
telekinesis. The film makes the viewer feel more empathy for Carrie,
while this is not important in the book. There are other things that
are verbatim in the film from the book, such as, “I can see your
dirtypillows.”2
These kinds of lines are necessary for the plot, while the
aforementioned lines are more for character development than plot.
Stephen King creates
visuals, majority of the time, through expressing the inner
depressions and feelings of Carrie. The shower scene is a perfect
example of this. King gives the visual of chaos from the girls and
their actions of throwing tampons and sanitary napkins at Carrie,
chanting, “Plug it up!” at the frightened girl who had started
her first menstruation.3
He shows the anguish and fear of Carrie as she goes through this
experience. King also shows how nervous Carrie is when she asks
Tommy, her out-of-the-blue prom date, “Do you like me?” and he
replies, “You're beautiful.”4
He showcases this unjustified fear of hers by having her blurt out
this question on her doorstep the second she sees Tommy, meanwhile he
confidently tells her the truth: that she is beautiful.
Brian DePalma, the director
of the 1976 film, interprets these visuals that King created in both
good and bad ways. DePalma expertly shows the shower scene verbatim
to King's visual in how it is laid out and executed. Every little
detail, down to the description of how Carrie is supposed to feel and
how that is expressed, is exactly as King wrote. Other scenes are not
quite as perfect to King's book as this one.
There is the scene where
Carrie asks Tommy, “Do you like me?” In the book, she asks him
this as he picks her up at her doorstep to her home before going to
prom. However, the film sets this up for happening actually at the
prom. Lastly, DePalma misses the mark on the ending, as far as
following the original vision of Stephen King.
DePalma goes in a
completely different direction with how he ended the story of Carrie
White. King had Carrie and Sue have a mental conversation as Carrie
got weaker, and inevitably died. The conversation really took off and
sent Carrie over the edge when Sue sent the message: “Look Carrie
look inside me.”5
It describes the weird feeling when Carrie opens Sue's brain and
reads it like a library filled with books, and how invasive the
experience is for Sue. Carrie is at her last moments before death and
Sue can feel it. Once Carrie is gone, Sue feels sorrow. In the film,
this is a much shorter and much different ending, probably because of
time constraints. DePalma has Carrie die with her mother in her arms,
murdered by her, while their house burns to the ground. This is
clearly a much shorter and much different ending than what King had
envisioned.
In my opinion, the film
version was better than the book, with one exception. The book seemed
to go on and on with the endless back and forth of the newsreels from
the “now” and the story from the “then.” Every ten pages or
so, there was a section entitled “ News item from the Westover
(Me.) weekly Enterprise,
August 19, 1966)”6
or “From The Shadow Exploded (p.129)”7
etc. It was just rather distracting and confused the story for me.
DePalma interpreted the
famous King book in some instances excellently, while in others
completely went in a different direction to make it better. DePalma
expertly conveys King's vision for the shower scene in the very
beginning. The way that he followed the words of King to the tee
makes this scene full of impact and gives the impression of inner
war, outer turmoil, and something truly freaky going on inside of
Carrie.
An example where DePalma
both did and did not accomplish what King had envisioned when writing
the scene is where Carrie asks Tommy this question: “Do you like
me?” This scene is full of emotion in both the book and the film.
The way that DePalma interprets the “Do you like me?” scene
accomplishes King's view by showcasing the true emotion that both
parties feel, Carrie's fear and Tommy's budding love for her.
However, it does not just by choosing a different venue for it to
occur, the front of Carrie's home8
versus actually at the prom.
Lastly,
DePalma just decides to go his own path in the end of the film, which
really disappoints me. The end of the book was where Carrie and Sue
have an entire conversation through their minds as Carrie gets weaker
and eventually dies. I enjoyed this ending and really preferred it
over the DePalma interpretation of the ending. DePalma had ended the
movie Carrie with
Carrie dies while holding onto her mother, whom she killed, as their
house “burns to Hell.” This ending really just depressed me while
the King's ending gave a slight glimmer of hope before dashing it to
pieces.
REFERENCE:
Carrie,
Stephen King. pp.3 – 290. Doubleday Dell Publishing, New York:
1974.
1Pages
69 – 70.
2Page
148.
3Pages
8 – 9.
4Page
147.
5Page
287.
6Page
3.
7Page
150.
8Page
157.
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