I only just discovered Gruen with the release of the movie Water for Elephants. Her books treat subject matter related to human animal relationships, and that interests me, but Water is definitely about circus! A Great Depression-era traveling big-top circus!
To the movie I give a thumb down. Movies from books are often more shallow, graphic, speedy, and sensationalistic, and when they’re all of these they can really wring out the viewer emotionally. The movie of Water left me feeling I’d been punched in the stomach and then mollycoddled to the divan to sleep it off. I couldn’t believe in the story, the characters, or any of what transpired, and the violence sent me reeling. The violence toward the elephant in this movie was so graphic I had to cover my eyes and ears and wait it out.
Leaving the movie theater the friend I went with said “those circus people sure are rough.” It wasn't his fault he got that idea. The fault, I think, belongs to the movie, and also to the novel, both of which perpetuate a stereotype. “Of course, it was supposed to be during the Depression,” he added, “People were desperate.”
I realize Gruen did her research for the novel, and I assume plenty of research was done in prep for the movie. But, I’ve known circus people. I worked as a publicist for a three-ring big-top circus called Great American Circus during the spring and summer of 1995. While it wasn’t all good, I can testify that circus folks aren’t all destitute runaways and homicidal maniacs, which is, in a nutshell, how Sara Gruen characterized them in Water. I’m not exaggerating; Gruen is.
In Water, her little big-top circus boss orders workers thrown off the circus train as it travels through the night, a cruelty Gruen presumably research, reffered to as red-lighting. Two of the story's characters, both with physical disabilities, one of whom is elderly, are pitched off the moving train to their deaths on a rocky embankment in the middle of the night. The circus boss had gone on a red-lighting rampage, we later learn. Even worse are the depictions of performing animals physically abused, kept in overcrowded spaces, fed rancid meat. One of the main threads of the plot has to do with the abuse of the circus’s star elephant and the elephant's revenge on the circus boss.
Yes, the protagonist struggled against and rose above the perpetrator and the abuse. He also fraternized improbably, fell in love, ran away, had an affair with the circus boss's wife, finally completed his veterinary training, married her and settled down to have a family, then worked for the greatest circus of them all, and finally became a lifelong circus person. Call me a spoiler, but the story is rather predictable.
I’m particularly concerned though that because this book shot to popularity, got an Alex award, and then became a movie featuring big stars with lots of appeal to youth, that young adults will buy it all. Concerned because this movie casts a cliche-ridden pall over an already dying form of performance art. I don’t hold Gruen responsible for the movie, although according to a bizarre picture of her floating around in cyberspace that depicts her in the mouth of the elephant, she was on location. Her novel does provide more detail and description in its narrative passages, and it therefore offers more character development. All novels do this though, don’t they? Movies, just by virtue of what they are, rarely capture what books can convey by narrative means.
On the drive home I kept trying, in conversation with my friend, to point out any backstory in that movie that might have illuminated the motivations at least the protagonist. It was a stretch. Apparently, we're supposed to believe what we see at the movies. And, that's the problem.
This circus movie is fantasy with a twist of horror, which would be okay if we understood it's just another thriller.
