Me Before You Movie - Thoughts?
- smhawkins
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Me Before You Movie - Thoughts?
The last movie I saw was an adaptation of Jojo Moyes' book Me Before You.
From what I could gather from friends and what I had heard through word of mouth, most people didn't seem to be huge fans of the movie. I had a few friends that hated the book too.
I wouldn't consider myself a pessimist, but I LOVED the book. For a romance novel, it wasn't romanticized into this ridiculous fairytale that would never happen. It showed the nitty-gritty, nasty sides of what it is like to take care of someone with such a great illness. It showed the kind of mental and physical toll that takes on the person going through it, as well as everyone around them. I most admired that it wasn't a boy-meets-girl story and love cures all. Will Traynor stayed very true to his character and Jojo took us through this journey with them.
As someone who had read the book, I thought the movie might be hard to follow if you hadn't read the book. Cinema is just another form of art and I could sympathize with filmmakers because you can only put so much into a 1-2 hour film. However, I thought, for the most part, they stayed very true to the events of the book and my only complaint was that they could have shown how difficult it was for Louisa to go to Switzerland at the very end of the film.
I'd love to know all of your thoughts on the book/film, though
- AL Hastings
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I understand that there are a lot of people who read the book or watch the movie and are immediately captured by the romance and drama. I suppose in that sense, Me Before You is a good romance story. However, I am going to be honest, that does not make it a good story all on it's own.
I do not want to come off as rude or nasty, but I find this book/movie to be upsetting and inappropriate. Not because of the love story, but because of the way the author handles the very sensitive subject matter that the book is based on. Let's face it, the thing that launched this story into success was because it featured a disabled man as a main character. If not for that, this story would be as well known as any other romance/drama book about two passionate lovers. That being said, I think Jojo Moyes abuses the disabled character trope, in that she makes a person who has a disability suffer more than any normal character would simply to cause distress for other characters who are not even directly effected by the persons disability. In a sense, Jojo Moyes makes an able character more effected by the disabled character's disability than they are themselves.
There is a lot to say about the treatment of the disabled character in the story, such as portraying him as suicidal because of his disability, assuming people can live better lives without disabled people holding them back, and--as the title of the book suggests--puts able people before disabled people. In general, I find that Moyes simply deals with disabilities very poorly, seeing as she is an able person writing a disabled person and handling that matter insensitively. The fact of the matter, is that every disabled person is different in how they deal with their own disability, so there is no single way to represent a character with a disability. However, because there are so few proper representations of disabled people in the media, when a book like Me Before You (which was really popular) portrays a disabled person as suicidal who considers themselves a burden to others, that does damage to actual disabled people. Because the media is viewed by so many, when the rare representation of a disabled person portrays them as poorly as Moyes did with her own character, that sets up a certain image for all disabled people as sad burdening people who are better off dead, and that is a terrible thing to do to the disabled community who already struggle enough, both in the media and out.
Again, there is a lot to say about this story, specifically about the treatment of the subject matter. However, this is not a review, just my open opinion. As I said, I know most people are drawn to the romance side of things, which the story mostly does well with (there are still some issue there as well), but any good story is more than just it's genre. A good fantasy book should be more than just fantasy. A good horror story should be more than just horror. And of course, any good romance should be more than just romance. There needs to be depth and evolution to a proper story, and strong development and design to characters. I am not exactly saying Me Before You lacked these things (albeit, I have seen better), but when we see a disabled character who greatest development in a story go from being alive to killing himself, there is something wrong there.
I hope I am not alone in seeing how bad Moyes treated her only disabled character. It is important for storytellers of this generation to portray disabled people as empowered. Again, I understand that not all disabled people may feel empowered, as all people handle those things differently. But again, it is a matter of the lack of representation of disabled people in the media in a really good way. It is therefore important to portray them as more than suicidal, burdening, and/or sources of suffering.
I should also make it clear that I am NOT disabled, and the opinions I wrote are opinions that I share with the disabled community. I think that when an entire community of people (the disabled community) say that a character who is like them was written insensitively and inappropriately, it is necessary to heed those words of people who are constantly unheard.
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