Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" is somewhat bittersweet. It's about kids huddled on Venus who only get to play outside one day per year, and the kind of behavior this ultimately provokes in them. Bradbury wrote it when Venus was thought to be gloomy and probably uninhabited, but before we found out that it was completely inimical to life. (Named after the goddess of love. Scores of poets are laughing in the great beyond.)
The short film above is billed as an adaptation. Literally it is no such thing. How can it be? There's no cast, and two minutes isn't long enough to tell the tale. Still, it does take advantage of the fact that even the most sterile and featureless environments can evoke a mood. Consciousness abhors a vacuum.
2 comments:
Although it's possible I once read the story I had no memory of it. Now that I've seen the synopsis, and besides, your note about the story, I better understand the reasoning behind the sstrangely beautiful but stark setting and the distant sound of children playing - the locked door too. Poor Margot who remembered Earth and loved the light.
My favorite story about Venus written in the days before its horrendous reality was understood is C.S. Lewis's Perelandra. It's essentially an allegory, a very beautiful one, about Eden before the Fall. I liked all three of his Space Opera novels, but this one I liked the best.
It was a sad story, and a psychologically penetrating one. I remember it being in one of our English books in grammar school (possibly what most people would call junior high.) Yeah, poor sweet Margot.
Perelandra is one that I haven't read yet, which I should do something about. I did read the last book in the series, That Hideous Strength which takes place on Earth. I think I might have just liked the title, but the book itself tells a fine story and is well worth the time.
Post a Comment