![]() ![]() “Everyone was sending Derek words of appreciation, and stories of audiences sobbing all across America.” And no wonder-Cianfrance’s film sacrifices the nuance of its source material and populates the story instead with saints and martyrs who are the victims of fate rather than their own actions. Plumb’s essay concludes with a happy ending of its own: the film’s warm reception in Paris, where “real people” (not critics, who, naturally, are automatons) appreciated it for what it was. In the novel, when the sergeant suggests that Hannah testify on behalf of her child’s kidnappers, she throws a vase at him. “Because you only have to forgive once,” Weisz answers beatifically, gazing at a photo of her dead husband. “Why would you do that?” asks the local police sergeant in disbelief, echoing exactly what I and surely others in the theater were thinking. The setting of the book was critical to the story too I cant imagine how a couple would come to care for a baby in total isolation, not knowing the origins. Stedman is a heart-wrenching story about a relationship between two people and the risks theyre willing to take for each. ![]() This all comes to a head at the very end of the film: When Isabel and Tom’s crimes finally catch up with them, Hannah offers to speak on their behalf, asking for clemency. ![]()
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