It is very rare that a film adapted from a critically admired book can match the impact of the written pages, let alone surpass it. This is not surprising by any means. Imagination has no budget limitations, the movie in your mind can be as long as it takes you to read the book and you can cast whoever you want in your imaginary film. If you’ve loved a book, prepare to be disappointed by the movie adaptation and lower your expectations.
I had read Lawrence Osborne’s novel The Forgiven some time ago. I was aware that it was going to be adapted for a movie and wanted to read it before watching the film. It has been written for the screen and directed by John Michael McDonagh, who has The Guard (2011) and Calvary (2014) among his credits. Now, having watched the film, I think that overall the filmmakers have done a decent job. Of course, in adapting a novel for a film you necessarily lose some parts of the book either due to limitations in time, budget, or for artistic reasons.
The setting and characters in The Forgiven are somewhat reminiscent of Paul Bowles’s The Sheltering Sky and Bernardo Bertolucci’s film based on it, though neither the book nor the movie of The Forgiven are quite up to that standard.
David (Ralph Fiennes) is an English doctor with a prestigious practice in London’s upmarket Chelsea district. He is driving in the middle of the desert in Morocco with his American wife Jo (Jessica Chastain). They are going to attend a lavish party given by David’s old classmate Richard (Matt Smith) and his partner Dally (Caleb Landry Jones). David is alcoholic and has had a few drinks before driving. While driving he loses his concentration for a split second and hits a local boy, who dies on the spot. David and Jo take the body to Richard’s mansion, where the party is in full swing. Richard tells him not to worry and calls the local police, who are reluctant to open a file for a peasant boy. They call it an accident and close the case. However, when the boy’s father appears at the mansion’s doorstep next day, the story takes a different turn.
McDonagh is particularly interested in exploring the characters and their moral and cultural traits. We get to know that David used to be a left wing intellectual at college, and that he is paying a heavy price, both financially and in damage to his professional reputation, for an incorrect diagnosis of a cancerous tumor that has cost the life of a woman. Therefore, he is responsible for two deaths. He is distinctly incompatible with Jo and it’s a wonder how their marriage has lasted 12 years, though it’s clearly on the rocks now. When David accompanies the dead boy’s father to bury his son, Jo uses the opportunity to succumb to the advances of the playboy financier Tom (Christopher Abbott).
We see the guests through the eyes of several people who make their own judgements about their behaviour. A French lady who has been hired to take photos of the party has a very low opinion of the hosts and the guests and their unruly behaviour and indulgence in use of drinks and drugs. The Muslim Moroccan servants express disgust at these infidels who have gathered at the residence of their “faggots” masters. The father of the dead boy and his friends are clearly enraged when seeing how the guests are partying wildly while the dead body of his son is lying in a room in the mansion, but they keep their opinions to themselves.
On this evidence, McDonagh’s skills are particularly impressive in writing, perhaps more so than directing. The screenplay for The Forgiven has a solid construction, retaining the book’s themes and narrative drive and peppering it with some timely dialogue: David, in response to someone making an observation about the birthplace of the Moroccan Royal Family, declares I love royal families, Prince Andrew, Mohamed Bin Salman!
The biggest coup of writer-director-producer McDonagh has been in the casting. Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain are both superb and are perfectly cast. Matt Smith (from TV’s The Crown) and Caleb Landry Jones, who impressed in Nitram, are splendid as the gay hosts. Christopher Abbot, who I had seen and liked in Black Bear (2020), also impresses as the opportunistic Tom. Of particular mention are Ismael Kanter as Abdellah, the father of the dead boy and the well-known French Moroccan actor Said Taghmaoui as Abdellah’s friend. The cinematography by Larry Smith and the costumes by Keith Madden are also noteworthy. Amazingly, for a movie with such a cast, The Forgiven has faced difficulties in finding distributors and has had very limited public screenings.
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