Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: Book vs Movie

After having read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, I feel that throughout the book Rhys uses light, or lack thereof, to control the mood. This creates a base for a movie, by using light one can determine camera angle, lighting, sound/music, and costumes. Without the hardware, in this case the camera angle or music, you can not have a complete movie. A computer will not work smoothly without hardware and software, likewise a movie will not be found appealing either. Lighting can also bring up emotions and how a movie can feel, by using light to determine these movie elements, sometimes one can also bring over the emotions into the scene. Though light does not determine the whole mood of the movie it can often make the movie have an overarching emotion. For my movie I would choose confinement, the moment when you are just on the verge of panic, locked in a stuffy hot place you cannot get out of.

The lighting I would choose for my movie is highly dependent on the light mentioned within the book. When Rhys writes about the mad lady in the attack menacingly brandishing a candle, “I was outside holding my candle” (171), the lighting in this scene to me is obvious. When this scene takes place it is the middle of the night and everything is quiet, but for the women who will commit the crime. This suggests that the scene must be dark with just the silhouettes of her environment around her, wild shadows from herself dance on the walls as she waits. Her candle is the only source of light, just barely illuminating her emaciated face. This may cause the person watching to feel suspense directly before the end of the movie so that one does not lose interest in the movie halfway through.

Light does not only refer to just light, as odd as that sounds, it can also portray emotions which leads to firstly music, a tool with which many express emotion, like interpretive dance, but that would not be in this movie. We can see that Rhys uses the bird to portray the main focus of light even though the whole entire house has just burned down, “He was all on fire” (39). By setting the bird on fire it makes me think about how wild fire is leading to the conclusion that the music set to this scene would also be wild. However, due to the fact that this scene takes place in a beautiful place we must take into consideration that the soundtrack here must also portray beauty, which is generally depicted by classical music that is calm or floury like a piano. To encompass both the wild and calming side of this scene I would pick a piece called Bolero by Maurice Ravel. Ravel, ironically, also went mad. He had frontotemporal dementia and this specific piece, Bolero, is repetitive and many say that it is annoying. However, I find it quite fitting for this book.

The camera angle also depends on light, where the sun is located, or how it shines through the window. I have decided that the camera angles in my film would be highly dependent on the light specific characters are seeing thesleves. “I shut my eyes,” “When I opened them I saw candles burnt down” (124). First of all, I would have the camera be Rodchester’s eyes so we are seeing everything from his point of view. When he shuts his eyes we see darkness and then the burned down candles when he opens them. This also means we must take into account how Rodchester feels at this moment, sick, overwhelmed, wild. As this scene continues, I would have the camera sway, blurring the room, but still from the perspective of Rochester. Though this may make some motion sick, it is a risk I would be willing to take. Having the camera through Rodchester’s eyes creates the illusion of the watcher being Rodchester so whatever they think about Rochester they become, whether that be an evil, innocent, or morally wrong person.

Setting the scene in a book is always done with a description of the room or place the book is in; however, when translating this into a movie one must also portray feeling through the set, and as I said before light often conjures emotion, which can help you design a set. Where the light shines in the room, how the shadows are being casted. In Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys is describing the set of a room, “A large table covered with a red fringed cloth made the small room seem hotter; the only window was shut” (110). Rhys explains a scene which centers around a shut window, yet it is still hot. This is the perfect one line description for a set. I would put a small round table with the table clothes approximately two feet from the covered window. When making this set I would want to follow as closely as possible to Rhy’s description, a red table cloth flowing over a mahogany table. Onto this table little beams of sunlight that have broken through the window covering would be resting on the table, dust particles floating around the air, giving the illusion of hot and stuffy. This directly contributes to the mood of the movie, claustrophobic, confined, insufferable.  

The film Jane Eyre directed by Cary Fukunaga directly relates to the book Wide Sargasso Sea; however, instead of from Antoinette's point of view we see it from Jane Eyre’s. This movie is dark and unkind creating an unpleasant, but page turning, if one could turn the pages of a movie that is, so I suppose binge worthy movie. To incorporate Jane Eyre into my movie, I would create the illusion of or ghost of Jane Eyre. An example of this would be when Antoinette is locked in the attic we see her peeking through the floorboards in England and seeing Jane Eyre with Rochester. This would then cut to the scene at the end of the movie, “to light me along the passage” (171). These actions, done by a seemingly lost woman, make the watcher see just a little human within her as it is clear she feels true anger towards Jane Eyre. Then the movie ends leaving everyone with conflicting ideas of whether or not Antoinette was in the right or the wrong. Further carrying out the suffocating mood of the film, even after it is finished you are still being choked with its cataclysmic ideology and problems.