The Forlorn Film

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
directed by Brad Silberling
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD at Stealth's

There's a litmus test for adaptation in the earliest pages of the first book of A Series of Unfortunate Events: "If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it." Silberling includes the line in order to set the tone of the film, while Jim Carrey, for the most part, underplays his tendency to turn any role into Ace Ventura. The production design is exquisite, and screenwriter Robert Gordon tailors the absurdity of the first three books' plots into a trimmer suit. The impression of shadowy, misunderstood machinations is present throughout, although the late (and explicit) revelation regarding Olaf's involvement in the Baudelaire fire misses Snicket's point about human nature completely.

To me, the Lemony Snicket books are not without their failings or the occasional sticky wicket of Anglophilia. But the last book in the series is something else: a great, sad novel about the mistakes people make and cannot atone for; the contradictions in ourselves and the people we love; and the rippling implications of even one unfairly broken heart. A man or a woman does not necessarily gain wisdom with age, or else wisdom is not the defense the mind and the heart require to be fortified against the terrible things at work in the world. Much of that philosophy is present in this movie, much to the movie's credit, but The End is wonderful and true, and rarer than any summary I could provide. I'm glad that an adaptation will never touch it.