A Rose for Emily is one of the most famous American short stories. It was first published in 1930. Here William Faulkner described a small southern city Jefferson, where people found a horrible secret of Emily Grierson after her death. The old spinster killed her love mate Homer Barron, saved his body and slept in one bed with it. There were several adaptations of this story. I think the most interesting was a movie posted on YouTube by Stu Rostad. Here author transferred story’s events to our days. Faulkner did not use many dates in his story. But the date of publication and a mention that “in 1894 [mayor] Colonel Sartoris remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity” (Faulkner 1) make me think Emily died in 1950s and Barron was killed at the beginning of the 20th century. Movie showed the funeral and revelation happened in 2001 and Emily Grierson met Barron in 1950s.
I liked this short film for several reasons. First of all, it was the most accurate adaptation that I saw. The director cut several moments, like girls who had china-painting lessons in Grierson’s house, but he followed the plot in main aspects. Faulkner did not tell the story in the chronological way. He started from the newer events and gradually told the story of Emily’s past. This decision helped to keep secret to the end of the story. The movie used the same strategy and used many of Faulkner’s tools to demonstrate Emily’s temper. While Stephen Rostad (the director) changed Grierson’s appearance and turned her into the tidy, small old lady, instead of obese woman, he did not forget scenes with tax notices. Other adaptation did not focus on them and some part of Emily’s personality was list.
The second movie’s advantage is in its style. It was made like a documentary, where citizens shared their memories. There was an interesting combination of color (present time) and black-and-white (past time) scenes. I liked the idea with multiple narrators. Faulkner used an unnamed narrator and there was only one background voice in some other adaptations. In this movie version of A Rose for Emily the story was presented from viewpoint of different citizens and generations. It helped to show that Emily Grierson really was some “sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 1).
The third advantage is a shift to the other time period. This decision totally changed the impression of the story. Faulkner’s original version was a representative of American Gothic style. It looked like a normal event that desperate Southern aristocrat killed her love mate because he destroyed her last chance to create a family. Faulkner mentioned there was an inherited insanity in Grierson’s family, which also was a common part of aristocratic heritage. The movie showed less romantic version of the story. While Emily’s father demonstrated arrogance, the film did not demonstrate any significant foundation for this behavior. Grierson’s house could be bigger than neighbors’ buildings, but it was not a huge house “decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies” (Faulkner 1). The filmmaker also did not mention Emily had relatives with mental disorders. New time period and these changes destroyed the Gothic touch, while the plot stayed the same. In the movie Emily was a woman from middle or higher middle class whose personality was damaged by the tyrannical father. The murder looked more shocking in these new conditions. It was also interesting to see how the filmmaker changed Emily’s servant who played the main second role. Faulkner made him a negro, while movie did not show character’s race and face.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily”. Resources.mhs.vic.edu.au. 1930. 1 Marc 2016.
Rostand, Stu. “A Rose for Emily”. Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 21 Apr. 2012. Web. 1 March 2016.
