From here to eternity: the filming of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Peter Rose

Publishing schedules are tight – ‘nasty, brutish and short’, some editors might even say. Books, often several years in the writing, are usually turned around in a matter of months – weeks even, if the topic is sensitive or controversial enough (David Marr’s The Henson Case, published by Text Publishing last year after a gestation of just two or three months, exemplifies the celerity with which author and publisher can move when the need arises).

Issues of ABR happen fairly quickly. Timeliness is important – we endeavour to furnish readers with cogent reviews as soon after publication of new books (simultaneously, if possible) – but we eschew those onerous deadlines that are the bane of literary hacks’ lives: ‘800 words by the day after tomorrow, thanks, Ed.’, to paraphrase George Orwell. Wherever possible we give our critics four or five weeks with a book. ABR contributors are busy people. Almost all of them have other careers, many of them senior ones. We want our writers to be comfortable with their articles: to reread the book if need be (always advisable), to allow it to ‘draw’, as it were, before sitting down and crafting the review (the hard part).

Once an article reaches ABR the Editor edits it, then several other people have a look at it, too. Once changes have been finalised we return it to the reviewer, so that she can see what we’ve done to it and make further changes, if she wishes. Then we page the article, which is subsequently proofed by about half a dozen people before that particular issue goes to proof. This in-house process takes anywhere between a week and a month – rarely longer. A week later, the new issue is ready to hit the news-stands – or subscriber letterboxes. And so it goes.

Film, notoriously, is very different, obeying its own mysterious and ostensibly dilatory principles. Few people in the publishing industry, I sometimes think, would be suited to this leisurely and enigmatic industry. It seems like years since we first heard about the filming of J.M. Coetzee’s Booker-winning novel Disgrace (1999). It was always an appealing prospect. Coetzee’s final twentieth-century novel is one of the great novels of the past two decades, as compelling and necessary now as it was ten years ago.

Now, at last, the Australian première of the film – an Australian–South African production – is imminent. Steve Jacobs is the director; Anna Maria Monticelli has adapted the novel for film. John Malkovich – always watchable and chameleonic – plays Coetzee’s embattled protagonist, David Lurie; newcomer Jessica Haines is his afflicted daughter. Judging by the stills, the cinematography is outstanding.

ABR stalwart Brian McFarlane (who frequently turns around books in a few days, and, endearingly, needs little editing) reviews the new film in our June issue, and is impressed by the adaptation. ‘Jacobs has taken a masterly novel and made an uncompromisingly brilliant film from this source.’ McFarlane admires Jacobs’s fidelity to Coetzee’s ‘curious tone of objectivity’: ‘There is perhaps a Brechtian denial of easy emotional involvement in favour of a tougher engagement with tough matters.’

Interestingly, McFarlane compares it with another new film, Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, which is based on The Dying Animal (2001), one of Philip Roth’s David Kepesh novels. Elegy stars Penélope Cruz in one of her most tense and intelligent roles. Opposite her is Ben Kingsley, playing another David, another ageing academic, another ‘disgracefully’ libidinous man of words.

Icon Film Distribution is distributing Disgrace in Australia, and the season starts on June 18. Icon has generously made lots of free double passes available for those who subscribe to ABR, so be quick.

Meanwhile, you can read Brian McFarlane’s article in its entirety when the June issue of ABR (about to go to print, as I write this) hits the news-stands on June 1.

And there’s more. In September, Random House will publish J.M. Coetzee’s new memoir, Summertime, the sequel to Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002). Boyhood, for this reader, is one of the great books about childhood – of any era – so Summertime (even in winter) is a superb prospect. We’ll review it in the September issue, of course.

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