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Interview With The Vampire (spoiler free)
Nov. 15th, 2022 08:00 pm
I read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles (and other books) when I was in university back in the early-mid 1990s. I enjoyed them enough that I read most of them twice. But they did become a little bit hatstand as they went along, so the last one I read was Memnoch the Devil. She released more books after that, and I was aware of it, but not motivated to buy and read them, given that Memnoch had gone beyond my tastes.
All of which is my long-winded way of saying that I came to the AMC series as someone who knows the characters and their relationships and foibles, but has long since forgotten the detailed plot points and what happened in what order. So that's the background to my take on it here.
And with that background, the show made a lot of changes to the plot and timeline, and they were good changes. Switching race for Louis and Claudia (among others) so that it wasn't an entire cast of white people was a no-brainer. What they then did with it, bringing race to the foreground of the narrative in the updated setting, was simply good writing.
In the books, the homosexuality started out as subtext and then became blatant text in the later novels when Anne Rice had a name and a following and could write what she wanted without the publishers pushing for change (this was both a good and a bad thing ::cough::) The TV series making the gay relationship open from the start instead of eking it in was another no-brainer, and one that the writers used to add another layer to the secrecy and forbidden nature of the lovers. Through all these changes, the writers kept the essence of the characters and their relationships and their conflicts the same, and that was critical, because they're absolutely recognisable as an AU version of the novels.
And then there's Daniel Molloy. By making this the second interview with the vampire, fifty years after the first, we establish Louis as an unreliable narrator from the start. In the first novel, we only have Louis' perspective, and in the later novels, other people's POV calls into question some of what Louis recounted. This Daniel brings up the differences between what Louis said fifty years ago and what he's saying now, and with the added access to Claudia's diaries, we know that other characters would tell the story differently. Crucially, we also learn that Louis sometimes lies to himself about his motivations. Absolute GENIUS move. It wouldn't work on TV, having an entire series with one POV character establishing fact and then blowing them up in series two. So this Daniel is ripping into the inconsistencies right from the start, leading up to an entirely different cliff-hanger, but one that leaves readers who know anything about the books waiting eagerly for more.
The casting is fabulous. The central vampire trio are great, as is Daniel. It will take more time to judge with some of the characters who had a lesser role in this series, but who are clearly intended for Greater Things. So yes, good acting, good script-writing, lovely atmospheric cinematography and costuming. Definitely want more.
All of which is my long-winded way of saying that I came to the AMC series as someone who knows the characters and their relationships and foibles, but has long since forgotten the detailed plot points and what happened in what order. So that's the background to my take on it here.
And with that background, the show made a lot of changes to the plot and timeline, and they were good changes. Switching race for Louis and Claudia (among others) so that it wasn't an entire cast of white people was a no-brainer. What they then did with it, bringing race to the foreground of the narrative in the updated setting, was simply good writing.
In the books, the homosexuality started out as subtext and then became blatant text in the later novels when Anne Rice had a name and a following and could write what she wanted without the publishers pushing for change (this was both a good and a bad thing ::cough::) The TV series making the gay relationship open from the start instead of eking it in was another no-brainer, and one that the writers used to add another layer to the secrecy and forbidden nature of the lovers. Through all these changes, the writers kept the essence of the characters and their relationships and their conflicts the same, and that was critical, because they're absolutely recognisable as an AU version of the novels.
And then there's Daniel Molloy. By making this the second interview with the vampire, fifty years after the first, we establish Louis as an unreliable narrator from the start. In the first novel, we only have Louis' perspective, and in the later novels, other people's POV calls into question some of what Louis recounted. This Daniel brings up the differences between what Louis said fifty years ago and what he's saying now, and with the added access to Claudia's diaries, we know that other characters would tell the story differently. Crucially, we also learn that Louis sometimes lies to himself about his motivations. Absolute GENIUS move. It wouldn't work on TV, having an entire series with one POV character establishing fact and then blowing them up in series two. So this Daniel is ripping into the inconsistencies right from the start, leading up to an entirely different cliff-hanger, but one that leaves readers who know anything about the books waiting eagerly for more.
The casting is fabulous. The central vampire trio are great, as is Daniel. It will take more time to judge with some of the characters who had a lesser role in this series, but who are clearly intended for Greater Things. So yes, good acting, good script-writing, lovely atmospheric cinematography and costuming. Definitely want more.
