Hearing the news that The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is being adapted for the screen by screenwriter Jeff Stockwell, I’m concerned.
The magic of Kate DiCamillo’s remarkable children’s book is that its central character is inanimate, and never speaks. Edward is a doll. A thinking doll, but a doll that does not come to life like the toys in Toy Story, or like the stuffed bear in the department store in the famous children’s book Corduroy. And yet, Edward Tulane is a book of powerful emotion, suspense, and beauty. Could it ever work as a film?
With Plastic Bag, director Ramin Bahrani and narrator Werner Herzog have convinced me that it can work. Although this 18-minute short is a work of tongue-in-cheek genius and wicked humor, it’s also rather affecting in spite of itself.
I once said that I would have liked American Beauty if it had been all about the plastic bag.
Well, here it is: 18 minutes of “too good to be true.”
This has me reflecting on the “inanimate objects” that have taken on personality through the mystery of movies.
The volleyball in Cast Away.
The monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Do you have a favorite big-screen inanimate object, one that takes on a mysterious presence over the course of the film?