Customer Reviews

The Green Ray

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A Jules Verne love story from and set in the 1880s is unlikely to be of interest except those with an interest in period literature, or fans of what Eric Rohmer did with this tale in his 1986 film "Le Rayon Vert", and to which Rohmer most cleverly acknowledged.

Verne is no Jane Austin. There's no subtlety of character development. All of the characters are lacking in dimensions. His is an adventure tale. His tale is about a privileged young woman, Helena, who hears about the mystical properties of the green ray and with determination sets out to experience it, bringing family and servants along. Her relatives use the quest to further their matchmaking goal, to match Helena with the preposterously unsuitable Aristobulus Ursiclos. Through adventure, fate intervenes as a matchmaker, and a most suitable match results.

Rohmer takes most of the same ideas and retells this matchmaking story under greatly different conditions of social expectations in 1984 France. But Rohmer, in his own way, is a Jane Austin, and a much more fascinating and nuanced tale results. For those who were moved by that tale, the back story of Verne's novel is interesting, and illuminates Rohmer's genius.

Verne's Helena hears of the Green Ray from a newspaper article. Delphine of French director Eric Rohmer's "Summer" hears friends discussing Verne's book. And so the book cannot help but be of interest to fans of Rohmer's eccenetric talkies. It is worth the read, but a few warnings might be in order.

Rohmer writes and directs in a post feminist age in which love is universally viewed as the perogative of the lovers, but in which its expression is so free and expected that nothing is clear to the lovers.

Verne writes to a rationalist age in which the attitudes of science and business are ascendant, romance is presumed to follow suit, and so love is not clear to anyone except the lovers.

Those expecting Verne to be writing about the lovers will be disappointed. Rohmer writes about lovers, and in retrospect it is easy to see how Rohmer got his idea from Verne. But Verne writes about social expectations and matchmaking. The irony is all the higher in realizing that Rohmer dwelt on the insights of the matchmakers in other movies, notably Autumn's Tale, but not in Summer.

Both heroines are annoying. Verne's is psychotically so. When compared with, say, a Jane Austen heroine, she is impulsive and one dimensional. But perhaps she is all that is required in a short moral tale. Because I expected more, and because the book is so dated in its context and references, I gave it only three stars, but fans of Rohmer's movie should add back one star. And students of romantic history, because of a rare reference to an old Gaelic tradition, St. Olla's Fair, apparently resembling the Roman festival of Lupercalia (pre-Valentine's), should add back another star.