'Your last wish' and the challenge of impossible adaptation

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Hollywood has almost always liked Joan Didion, although she has almost never known what to do with her work. Joan Didion, on the other hand, has never liked the Hollywood industry. Thus, His last wish, presented at the last Sundance festival and now available on Netflix, is only the second adaptation of one of the novels of this writer and reporter, perhaps the only one of his line that, without needing to adapt to anything, It was just as relevant when Charles Manson was a figure for some than when Harvey Weinstein began to be a villain for everyone. Directed by Dee Rees (Mudbound, Pariah), the film is based on the book of the same title published in the mid-nineties by this author born in Sacramento in 1934. Written by Rees herself with Mario Villalobos and starring Anne Hathaway in the role of a journalist who at some point can even remember the Orlando of Virginia Woolf, Ben Affleck - an impeccable diplomat - and William Dafoe - a facineous and uncomfortable father -, the tape has been awash in epic dimensions by specialized critics .

In the original work, Elena McMahon, the character of Hathaway, is forced to stop investigating the Reagan administration and its role in financing the Nicaraguan Contra and is sent by the Washington Post (in the film the name of the newspaper for the that works is fictitious) to cover the president's reelection campaign. This is weird, but Didion makes it interesting and it works. Instead, Rees decides to have Elena embark on a strange tour of Central America in a mix of Warren Zevon's song and already discarded scenes from the Narcos series . There, she will be involved in her father's arms sales business and the management of the Contra scandal, whose fire tries to put out the diplomat played by Ben Affleck (he didn't look forward to going home since the promotion Batman vs. Superman).

So far it might seem that what the filmmaker has undertaken is a simple plot license to try to fit the most dissonant parts - which does not fit even a voiceover - of Didion's work, which plays with time, space, feelings and personal, professional and political realities. But, in the end, the director has managed to end up in the center of hundreds and hundreds of unanimous critics in labeling the huge mess movie, lacking coherence and hardly explainable, not only for the reader, but also for the actors, whose face of Pasmo presides over the greatest art of the tape. Not because of script requirements: because of the script.

It is possible to trace the germ of failure in Didion herself. There has been a lot of talk since the premiere of Her last wish of how all her mistakes are justifiable from how complicated it is to adapt this author. But, of course, we justify a bad movie because the original work is irreproducible when the film is openly bad. David Cronenberg came out more than graceful of his version of The Naked Lunch of William S. Burroughs and even Alan Rudolph solved the ballot to take to the cinema The breakfast of the Kurt Vonnegut champions . In the case of Rees, the feeling given by the adaptation of Joan Didion is that of having more interest in appearing in Google searches when the author's name of The Year of Magical Thinking is typed, that in really contributing something. From the edition of this book in 2005 - then a successful play would arrive with David Hare, Vanessa Redgrave and the author itself - and the premiere of The Center will yield in 2017, documentary around his life directed by Griffin Dunne, actor and Didion's nephew, the figure of the veteran writer has become one of the most accurate and irreproachable cultural consensuses of this century. But Didion is flammable material when it comes to taking it to the movies. And it is curious, because the writer loves the show business and likes to strut to have famous friends in Hollywood. Harrison Ford was his carpenter.

The other time he took a book of his to the cinema was in 1972. The script for Play it as it lays (As the game comes) was written by the author with her husband, John Gregory Dunne. They formed a couple of those who finish the sentences and when the phone rings he picks it up at the same time in different rooms. Rees is far from understanding Didion as Dunne did, to the point that the only thing worthwhile in this movie is perhaps the trailer: two minutes that promise a cross between The Pelican Report and Under the Volcano . It is better to see it after watching the tape, so one does not get angry at having been deceived, but, simply, is saddened by what could have been and was not.