the book already a disappointment but the movie damp squib
As soon as I read Captain Corelli's Mandolin I watched the movie. Well the book was already a disappointment but the movie was really a greater damp squib! Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a love story developed between –PELAGIA-the daughter of the local physician and an Italian captain- Antonio Corelli on the island of Cephallonia. The story is set against the backdrop of Italian-German occupation during WW2. At the start of the book we see Pelagia is engaged to be married to a guy named Mandras who is handsome and cool but ignorant and uneducated. Their love burns out with the war and we soon come to realize it is a love based on lust. When Mandras comes back from the war in unrecognizable shape, shabby clothes, with legs oozing disgusting pus and greenish suppuration, with hair full of lice it provokes a latent disgust within Pelagia. As soon as he recuperates from his wounds he is back to the mountains to commingle with the communist guerilla forces which fight against the occupant forces. While he turns out to be brutal punk by swallowing the revolutionist hogwash a pure love comes to bud between Pelagia and the captain.
It sounds like s nice story well actually it is but something is really missing in this book.
When I read the half of the book I though it is unnecessarily wordy and prolix but when I finished the book I thought it needed a second volume. How so? Well the first 400 pages of the book tell about a few years and then the last 100 pages tell about nearly 60 years. We find Pelagia as an old lady who meets her Corelli at the end of the book (though in the movie Corelli finds his way to Cephallonia after a few years)
Some sources claim that the story of Captain Corelli's Mandolin is plagiarised from a remarkably similar true account written by a former captain in the Italian Army. De Bernières denies all knowledge of this account before writing Captain Corelli's Mandolin but the extraordinary similarity between the two stories leaves many with a great skepticism as to whether this is true.
After finishing the book I thought if such a book had been written by a writer like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky we could have found something really more profound in the book.
Yes it is true that there is some sort of ambiguity in the book who is really villain who is hero. The writer succeeds in commingling his characters with the brutal men-Mussolini, Hitler, Metaksis while he makes us sympathize with all the characters. Somehow we cannot hate Carlo Guerca-the Italian soldier who has homosexual tendencies. The writer makes us see his love for his comrade-in arms Francesco and the captain really pure.
He doesn’t let us hate Mandras, who savagely beats up villagers, who tries to rape Pelagia (not in the movie. In the movie we see him as a heroic guy), who does all sort of atrocities in the name of an ideology. He doesn’t let us hate the German soldier GUNTER- who overlooks the killing of Corelli and his soldiers. It is surprising for me not to be able to hate even one of them while the writer takes a harsh view of all the ideologies mentioned in the book.
In that sense the book sounds wonderful but while De Bernières takes a harsh view against communism and fascism he doesn’t reflect why their followers follow the steps of these views. It is easy to say “they had to, they were ignorant they needed something to believe or this is the way megalomaniacs get busy when little people gets hurt. It is impossible to come across an intellectual debate in the book. All the dialogues are on the clash between king supporters and pro-communists and all of these debates are childish piffle like “Did you see the miracle? Can Stalin do that? God’s force has showed itself”
What really pushed Mandras to go back to mountains while he had a lovely girl?
What pushed Mandras to beat a poor villager to death just when he got into the group? Why was he being myrmidon who followed the orders unscrupulously all the time? We don’t really find a satisfying answer why Corelli became a soldier while he had such a poetic soul?
What’s more while De Bernières takes a harsh view against some ideologies he takes side for some nations! He aurifies the peace-loving efforts of the British forces! To aurify British forces while slating Germans? I can’t know what Greek people lived during that time on that island, I can’t know how Italian soldiers treated them either but I am positive they were not peace-loving angels. If the writer could try alittle bit more he could turn the book into an encomium.
At least at four points the writer makes a pointed reference to Turks. I thought to myself what is wrong with this guy? Like we are the eternal ghouls of Greeks?
There was something in the first WW1 but why did he see the necessity to mention the name of Turk in a war where we did not take part thanks you great foresight of Ataturk? Do you know the diary (two volumes) of Dostoyevsky has been published lately here? Dostoyevsky was a man who led the Russians with his ideological suggestions. Once he told “Russia cannot be complete without Istanbul”. He did not like Turks but you cannot see a despicable reference to any race in his books.
He makes his characters speak in French, German or English but he doesn’t insult or praise these nations. In De Bernières writing this is not the case. You cannot find the psychology of the characters, what pushed them to their destiny, what the profound incentive of their actions is.
Last but not least it’s the first time that I see a movie diverted from the book that much!