{"id":1154,"date":"2009-01-26T22:06:56","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T03:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2018-08-10T01:18:02","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T05:18:02","slug":"le-grand-meaulnes-verhaeghe-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=1154","title":{"rendered":"(Verhaeghe 2006) Le Grand Meaulnes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">If you have a cer\u00adtain frame of mind (which I have, and share with my friend William Brei\u00add\u00ading), you will nat\u00adu\u00adral\u00adly be drawn to the remark\u00adable 1913 nov\u00adel by Alain-Fournier [Hen\u00adri Alban-Fournier, 1886\u20131914]. <em>Le Grand Meaulnes<\/em> is just\u00adly con\u00adsid\u00adered a mas\u00adter\u00adpiece of French lit\u00ader\u00ada\u00adture, and it cap\u00adtures the sub\u00adtle ten\u00adsion between dream and real\u00adi\u00adty, and between desire and ful\u00adfill\u00adment. The main char\u00adac\u00adter, Augustin Meaulnes, a sev\u00aden\u00adteen-year-old stu\u00addent, gets lost and encoun\u00adters a woman he falls in love with, then can\u2019t find her, an event that deter\u00admines the sub\u00adse\u00adquent sto\u00adry. But the tale is told from the point of view of his fif\u00adteen-year-old friend Fran\u00e7ois Seurel, and it\u2019s this tech\u00adnique that makes the sto\u00adry bril\u00adliant, because the real point of the sto\u00adry is what it all means to Seurel.&nbsp;It\u2019s an ele\u00adgant, pre\u00adcise\u00adly writ\u00adten tale, and the author\u2019s obvi\u00adous genius was almost imme\u00addi\u00adate\u00adly extin\u00adguished on the bat\u00adtle\u00adfields of World War&nbsp;I.<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The nov\u00adel was suc\u00adcess\u00adful\u00adly filmed in 1967 by Jean-Gabriel Albic\u00adoc\u00adco, but I haven\u2019t seen that ver\u00adsion.&nbsp;This 2006 ver\u00adsion, direct\u00aded by Jean-Daniel Ver\u00adhaeghe, begins well, but gets bogged down half-way through, and incom\u00adpre\u00adhen\u00adsi\u00adbly changes the end\u00ading. Meaulnes is played by Nico\u00adlas Duvauchelle, a good actor who is mis\u00adcast in this role.&nbsp;He makes Meaulnes seem surly and self\u00adish, and his Hugo-Boss mod\u00adel looks are wrong for this.&nbsp;Jean-Bap\u00adtiste Mau\u00adnier plays Seurel.&nbsp;He\u2019s the angel\u00adic-look\u00ading lad who sang the sopra\u00adno part of Saint-Preux\u2019s <em>Con\u00adcer\u00adto Pour Deux Voix<\/em> and appeared in <em>Les Cho\u00adristes<\/em>.&nbsp;He does a rea\u00adson\u00adably good job, but the attempt to age him at the end of the movie by giv\u00ading him a mus\u00adtache looks ridicu\u00adlous.&nbsp;But by then, the movie has drift\u00aded into lim\u00adbo, any\u00adway.&nbsp;Cl\u00e9\u00admence Po\u00e9sy looks and sounds too mature for her&nbsp;part.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you have a cer\u00adtain frame of mind (which I have, and share with my friend William Brei\u00add\u00ading), you will nat\u00adu\u00adral\u00adly be drawn to the remark\u00adable 1913 nov\u00adel by Alain-Fournier [Hen\u00adri Alban-Fournier, 1886\u20131914]. Le Grand Meaulnes is just\u00adly con\u00adsid\u00adered&nbsp;a&nbsp;\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=1154\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[948,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d-viewing","category-dr-viewing-2009"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8123,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/8123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}