June 10 Movie night for book club

On Tuesday this week the book club viewed "The Painted Veil" based on the book by W. Somerset Maugham. The movie was very different from the book, with a completely different ending. Both were very good. It would have been hard to stay more true to the book in certain aspects since so much of the book took place in Kitty's mind. However, I didn't see any reason to change the ending, except to possibly make the movie more acceptable to the modern audience. It was a little more upbeat than the book, even though Walter dies in both the book and the movie. In the book, Kitty has a last one-night-stand with Charlie and feels devastated. She then goes to the West Indies with her father to have and raise her child. The child is not born yet at the end of the book. In the movie, she meets Charlie on the street in London and introduces him to Walter, her 4 year old son, there is no mention of her father and she doesn't fall into bed with Charlie.

Here is the source of the title:

"Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear."
byPercy Bysshe Shelley

"What Walter and Kitty see is a 'painted veil' - an unreal mimicking of life." Tony Watkins (Culture Watch) -www.damaris.org


Next month's book is The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. We'll meet on July 8 at 7:00 in the WCR conference room on the second floor of the library.