Housekeeping

I've been wanting to see the film of Housekeeping ever since I knew it existed. Finally, thanks to ILL, I got to watch it. To review--Housekeeping is a coming-of-age novel about the narrator, Ruth's, choice to follow her aunt, Sylvie's, transient life over the traditional way of life of her town and sister, Lucille. Here's Roger Ebert's review, which is better than anything I could ever hope to write (and oh, so, insightful insofar as it's close to my own interpretation of the novel):

At the end of the film, I was quietly astonished. I had seen a film that could perhaps be described as being about a madwoman, but I had seen a character who seemed closer to a mystic, or a saint.

The film was really similar to the book, perhaps the most similar film adaptation that I'm aware of (except perhaps the 5-hour Pride and Prejudice). This was purportedly Forsyth's aim while making the film, and I think I read somewhere in some interview that Robinson was quite happy with the film. I read somewhere, too, that Diane Keaton was originally supposed to play Sylvie. However, she sent Forsyth a list of adjustments to her character; he didn't go out of his way to smooth things over (which is to say, he ignored her suggestions) and she dropped out six weeks before the filming started. Christine Lahti plays Sylvie to general acclaim; I have no complaints.

Some dismiss the film as a family-friendly comedy, but I don't think that's was made at all. Forsyth brings the novel to life--it can't help but be funny as Sylvie and Ruth and Lucille go on with life in a flooded house (cooking breakfast and dancing around the living room) or when Sylvie puts a curtain-fire out while still singing "Happy Birthday." But the real tension between madness and sanity, the real sorrow of the novel, remains (or is enhanced).

The biggest difference between the novel and the film is the ending. While Robinson's novel ends with Ruth and Sylvie engaging in a life of transience, Forsyth's film stops as Ruth and Sylvie run over the train tracks, away from the town of Fingerbone. At the very end, there's a quiet voiceover of Lucille's observation from earlier in the film that "she always does that--she just wanders away." Rather than allow Ruth, the novel's narrator, the last word, Forsyth gives it to Lucille. It isn't Lucille, the character who sides with the town and eschews her sister and aunt, however; it is a younger Lucille, one still in transition toward the town and away from her family. It is an observation, rather than a judgment. Although there is, of course, a nascent judgement inherent in the observation.