In my indisputably accurate ranking of Michael Mann's films, I more or less brushed aside The Keep, noting solely that it's terrible and you shouldn't watch it unless you're a completist. I was somewhat surprised to hear back from three separate people whom I trust and respect that The Keep, the book, is actually quite good. Curious, I sat down this weekend and read it.*
And my friends were right! F. Paul Wilson's book is quite good, a solid piece of genre fiction that nimbly deals with big concepts like faith and disbelief, good and evil. It's not terribly surprising that Hollywood made a hash of the adaptation. The story is complicated, revolving around a mysterious castle holding an unspeakable evil that is hiding its true nature in an effort to sway a decent man into setting it free. Plus, Nazis!
Wilson was understandably frustrated after the film tanked, penning a short story that pretty viciously took down Mann and his adaptation. You can read the story for the rather graphic description of the things Wilson wanted to do to Mann, but for our purposes it's more interesting to consider why he was angry. Wrote Wilson in "Cuts":
‘You couldn't get it to make sense! As I walked out of that screening I kept telling myself that my negative feelings were due to all the things you'd cut out of my book, that maybe I was too close to it all and that the public would somehow find my story in your mass of pretensions. Then I heard a guy in his early twenties say, 'What the hell was that all about?' and his girlfriend say, 'What a boring waste of time!' and I knew it wasn't just me.’ Franklin's long bony finger stabbed through the air. ‘It was you! You raped my book!’
Milo had had just about enough of this. ‘You novelists are all alike!’ he said with genuine disdain. ‘You do fine on the printed page so you think you're experts at writing for the screen. But you're not. You don't know the first goddam thing about visual writing!’
‘You cut the heart out of my story! The Hut was about the nature of evil and how it can seduce even the strongest among us. The plot was like a house of cards, Gherl, built with my sweat. Your windbag script blew it all down! And after I saw the first draft of the script, you were suddenly unavailable for conference!’
Tough stuff. But not an unreasonable complaint. Here's a passage from The Keep, in which the stakes are plainly laid out for us during a tarot card reading:
"Shuffle, cut, and deal again," he said. Josefa nodded agreement and the routine was repeated, this time with no small talk. Despite her skepticism, Magda found herself leaning forward and watching the cards as they were placed on the table one by one. She knew nothing of tarot and would have to rely solely on the interpretation of her hostess and her grandson. When she looked up at their faces, she knew something was not right. "What do you think, Yoska?" the old woman said in a low voice. "I don't know...such a concentration of good and evil...and such a clear division between them." Magda swallowed. Her mouth was dry. "You mean it came out the same? Twice in a row?"
As I wrote, it's not terribly surprising that Hollywood made a hash of it. What is surprising is that they chose Michael Mann to make a hash of it. As best as I can tell, Mann isn't particularly interested in questions of good and evil or faith. He's interested in excellent men (and they're all men) performing at the top of their given profession. He's not interested in is religion: There isn't a believer in any of his other films, as best as I can tell, and certainly no one who allows their faith to drive their decision making. He also doesn't seem terribly concerned with good and evil: The closest thing to "evil" in any of his pictures is probably Heat's Waingro, and even then it's only because Waingro sees himself as an evil man.** He aspires toward evil. He wants to be the alpha of evil. And, as we know, Michael Mann is all about alphas.
Adaptation is tricky. There's a reason Oscars are granted for both original and adapted screenplay. However, the most important thing to keep in mind is pairing the sensibility of the writer and director to the source material. Consider this year's Academy Awards: It makes sense to match up a director fascinated by bodies in extremis with a tale of brutality and dehumanization of the flesh, just as it makes sense to match up a director fascinated by slick criminals and the perversion of the American Dream with a tale of Wall Street hot shots making a mockery of our way of life.
Michael Mann and The Keep were a bad fit—and an object lesson to those who would try to cram a talented director into a subject matter that either doesn't interest him or he doesn't understand.
*You can both watch and read The Keep for free if you have an Amazon Prime membership (and a Kindle, for the book), by the way. I for one welcome our Amazonian overlords.
**Some will likely counter by arguing that the heavy in Manhunter is evil. I can see that, but I think Dollarhyde's just psychotic and therefore lacks free will. And without free will, can a man be evil?