Movie Based On Pulitzer Prize Book: Newspaper Life In Small Town
By Jan Aaron

Must a movie adaptation mirror its literary source? This is a question educators might ask students, suggesting they see these films before reading their books.

Director Lasse Hallstrom’s lovely film, The Shipping News, from a screenplay by Robert Nelson Jacobs, based on the Pulitzer Prize novel by E. Annie Proulx, has been widely criticized for casting Kevin Spacey as Quoyle, the novel’s fat protagonist. He is convincing, although he doesn’t look like his literary counterpart.

Quoyle’s troubles link to a childhood incident when he nearly drowns after his father throws him off a pier as a way of teaching him to swim. Quoyle still drowns – in his troubled life. He has a dead end job as a newspaper ink

setter; an unfaithful wife (wonderful cameo by Cate Blanchette) who saddles him with a child. His parents commit suicide.

When Quoyle’s wife dies, the middle aged loser hits the road with his aunt (a solid Judi Dench) and daughter for a new life in their battered ancestral home in frozen Newfoundland. Hired by a local paper to write the shipping news, he is helped by his eccentric colleagues to sharpen his writing skills, and, with each article, he seems to stand straighter. His growing love for widow Wavey Prowse (a sweet Julianne Moore) also helps Quoyle gather the strength to repair his wounds.

(The Shipping News, 111 minutes, released by Miramax, R; Scotland PA, 108 minutes, released by Lot 47 Films, R. Call 777-FILM.)

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