The film adaptation of The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne – MOROCCO

9th September 2022

The film adaptation of The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne – Morocco.

Noir in the desert!

It is so tricky to capture the vibe of a book and translate it credibly into a visual medium.  The Forgiven is one of the early titles I read when we were building the initial TripFiction database and it really stayed with me. I enjoyed the noir, louche atmosphere and its transportive feel, it positively glows with the red earth of Morocco.

David Menninger and his wife Jo arrive in Morocco and hire a car. He has had his fill of alcohol by the time they set off, driving in the dark one evening into the Sahara in order to spend the weekend with a group of friends at a fabulous Ksar (Castle) in the middle of nowhere. En route he hits and kills a young Berber man, who during the day sold fossils. There are tails of murder and car hijackings. The young man’s death is of course catastrophic, but eventually the couple finds their way to the destination. The story unfolds around how the Western group of decadent hedonists, holed up at the Ksar, copes with the fall out and potential retribution from the local community. The boy’s father arrives and requires David to accompany him and his cohort, including the body of the dead teenager, back to their home in the depths of the desert. David is of the opinion that he can surely just pay him off and secretes a miserly $1000 for the trouble.

In an article written by Katie Bowman in The Sunday Times, 4 September, she highlights that the production team wanted to carefully match the locations in the original novel. The producer, Elizabeth Eves says: “It was a struggle to film in these places, but authenticity was crucial. John [director] wanted to do a faithful adaptation of the book, we we were always going to shoot in the actual places where the story is set. The specific part of Morocco in which we shot becomes an important character in the story”. And they really have created a fabulous and vividly colourful and potent setting. The Ksar is replete with an aura of luxe and bohemianism, food and drink are spilling over to excess, music is ubiquitous. It is louche living on an epic scale. Every whim is catered for, but the Westerners are impervious to the fact the locals quite possibly understand more of the disparaging dialogue than they let on, which in turn feeds their distaste of these ghastly people. Narrative tension is maintained amidst all the partying. All good so far.

David is admirably play by Ralph Fiennes, his wife, Jo, by Jessica Chastain. The two hosts are played by Dally Margolis and an erstwhile Dr Who, Matt Smith. There is a whimsical nod to Matt Smith’s former role as the eleventh Dr Who, offering is a snort out loud moment as realisation dawns. There are, actually, several funny one liners, there are moments of dark humour and satire, all riddled with the ghastly behaviour of ghastly people (Fiennes channels his Voldemort stare with great aplomb), and it’s all set against the stunning backdrop of Morocco, which the film crew captures so well.

When I read the novel, I could let my imagination run riot and I didn’t have to be fully cognisant of the true depths of depravity and racism that mein host and his party display. In the film, they are visually laid out in quite stark terms, underlining the almost colonial feel of the incomers’ attitudes. Its in-your-face opulence has the audience gawping and then shuddering at the iniquities, in equal measure.  It then moves into the realms of the absurd when the various dancing scenarios get going, which look like staged pieces from the 1970s, with specific gyrating of the era (think Top of the Pops back then). The whole film is populated by background extras, whose function is to look glam, drink alcohol, dance and gyrate, troop through to dinner and wave their farewells from their smart cars, as they head out of the gates for the final time at the end of the weekend. Bizarre, yet somehow mesmerising.

The tension was really overtly tangible until it was broken by moments of high farce and the image of one young (pretty) woman, in silver hotpants, earlier seen lolling on a blow up flamingo at a water hole is just eye-rollingly gratuitous and absurd. An intentional device, no doubt.

Overall I very much like the book as I felt the novel was more nuanced and subtle, and it deftly handled issues with which the author played around, more so than the film, which graphically spelled out the whole situation. Very watchable, however and very transportive.

Here’s a question: Why haven’t they given the novel’s cover a good overhaul – given there always seems to be a tie-in between novel and film – it’s now looking a bit dated with a very boxy car and won’t have people rushing to pick it up? And really is a book that is worth your time.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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