Chocolat- Roar Post #4 [ Movie Comparison to Book]

To start off, I guess I could talk about the plot points, and how the movie’s plot differed from the book’s. First of all, the main antagonist of the book is the priest Francis Reynaud. In the movie however, although he is still Reynaud, he is now a mayor. The role of priest has been given to a new character known as Pere Henri. Reynaud still shows religious influence over the townspeople by bossing the priest around ( in the movie, the priest is very good natured and nice, which I liked). A few insignificant changes that I noticed was that Josephine’s husband’s name was changed from Paul to Serge. I am not sure why the producer changed this, as it does not help advance the story in any way, but alas, he did it. In addition to that, in the movie, Serge/Paul tries to win Josephine back by transforming into a gentleman. But when she still rejects him, he goes back to his drunken state and then proceeds to burning Roux’s ship. In the book, Paul never undergoes any change. Adding on to that, in the movie, it was Paul’s burning of the ships that caused him to be kicked out of town by Reynaud. In the book though, Paul fled the town due to the embarrassment of losing his wife. On another note, we see that Caroline helps Vianne in her chocolate shop towards the end of the movie. Finally, one other thing that immediately comes into mind is that Armande dies in the company of her grandson Luc. In the book, it is much more clever. First, Armande suffers a near death experience, but Roux manages to get help from Vianne, who ends up saving her life. In the book, Armande dies very expectedly and ideally, after her 81^st birthday party. This way of dying I prefer rather than the abrupt death as shown in the movie.

Actually, there was one difference that I really enjoyed and welcomed wholeheartedly. It is in the ending, and I prefer the movie ending a bit more. In the book, like I’ve mentioned in Roar post # 3, I did not really like the book ending to Chocolat. The reason was because it seems as though Reynaud suffered a very dishonorable downfall, and I usually like my antagonists to have a good ending as well ( well, most antagonists ). In the movie, it was a more cliché ending but I liked it more. Mayor Reynaud apologized to Vianne, Vianne forgave him, and the chocolate festival was a huge success. There are many more minute differences, but I shouldn’t go into too much detail. These are the ones that stuck out to me.

Now lets talk about the camera work. Something really cool that I saw was that Pere Henri, the priest always stood on a high balcony when speaking to the townspeople at mass. This reminds me of one of the film terms that we went over in class, the low angle shot. This type of shot makes sense being directed toward the priest, because it makes him seem very big and powerful. Fortunately, his demeanor serves to present him as nice and approachable as well. I don’t know if this next observation is a coincidence or not, but it seems pretty plausible. In the movie, during a long shot where Roux and Vianne are alone and talking, I noticed flame in the foreground. I immediately took this to be some sort of foreshadowing for imminent danger. I already know the imminent danger to be Roux’s boat catching no fire since I read the book, but I was still apprehensive to see what would happen next to break the peace. My prediction about the foreshadowing turned out to be right, because a few minutes later the scene erupts in flames. In terms of the mod of the movie, I saw an obvious choice in color. When it is wintertime, the entire town is very gray, but when spring arrives, everything is vivid with bright colors.

Finally, I want to note that the movie executed the fall of mayor Reynaud quite nicely. When he is finally seduced by the chocolate and begins eating the stuff like crazy, the movie showed it high angle shots to make Reynaud seem weak and vulnerable. The next day, almost as an additional insult, the movie shows Reynaud asleep, covered in chocolate, and displayed publicly to the townspeople (as he fell asleep in front of the display).

All in all, the movie was not quite how I imagined it, but I enjoyed it all the same.