Does Changing ‘Scarlet’ Make for a Red-Letter Day? : Revisionist Joffe Takes Moral Low Ground

Roland Joffe has been a great filmmaker, even when he has failed. And I, for one, have no problem with revisionist movies. But when you rewrite a classic, you’d better be making improvements, not just changes’Scarlet Letter’ Director Defends License to Change,” Calendar, Oct. 16).

In Joffe’s “The Scarlet Letter,” Prynne and Dimmesdale are given the moral high ground. Yet, they fall into the hay together (literally) just seconds after Dimmesdale tells Prynne that her husband is presumed dead. Instead of experiencing the intensity of two pure souls inspired beyond control by their deep love, we get two horny high schoolers inspired by their previously restrained organs. That’s not Hester Prynne “re-creat[ed] . . . for these times,” as Joffe claims. That’s revolting behavior in any era.

Joffe defends the sexual element brought to the movie by Demi Moore. Moore has traditionally been capable of projecting the intense sensuality that Joffe wanted to add to the story without having a camera lingering on her various uncovered, partially covered and moistly covered body parts.

By not updating but reducing Hawthorne’s Puritan culture to caricature, Joffe took the easy way out. He portrays the Puritans as stupid, ignorant and weak-willed when push comes to shove, reduced to speechless chattel after a self-righteous speech by the Reverend/Seducer Dimmesdale and an impromptu attack by the Native Americans.

I am perfectly willing to share Joffe’s projection of the Puritans as the 17th-Century filmic representatives of the 1990s religious right. But to reduce them to buffoons is to indulge in the same hypocrisy that makes them such good villains.

Finally, Joffe sadly perpetuates the racism he attempts to comment on by making the Native Americans into set dressing and ultimately a weak story device. The occasional mentions of unrest in the Native American tribe are tantamount to the sounds of the “tom-toms in the distance” that were standard in old cowboy movies. And the evolution of the Robert Duvall character into a spiritually aware Native American warrior ultimately doesn’t bring him honor, but insanity and death.

Art about morality needs to have a moral center of its own. And if Joffe’s “The Scarlet Letter” has one, it escapes this contrarian heathen, who did everything he could to avoid reading “The Scarlet Letter” for as much of his high school career as possible.