Close, But No Cigar

Rating: 3/10 (27 March 2011)

While the movie was still controversial for its time, it was too censored to fully convey Steinbeck's message. The movie reorganized the scenes so that instead of the Joads going from Hoovervilles to the government camp (Weed Patch) to the boxcars they went from Hoovervilles to the Ranch to the government camp (Wheat Patch). They changed the order in the movie and took the hard-hitting tragedy of the book and made it into the feel-good-movie-of-the-year. This censorship happened with many scenes in the movie. The Joads, in the book, ended by fleeing from flooding boxcars to the sanctuary of a damp barn while in the movie they leave a clean, nice government camp to go get 20 days worth of work while driving off into the sunset. The movie also completely leaves out the ending of the book where Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn baby and then has to flee with some of the family to a barn to get out of the "wet". When they reach the barn she nurses an old man dying of malnutrition. This is a very powerful ending that was completely written out.
Another major criticism I have for this movie is the lack of emotion and connection. When grandma and grandpa die in the movie, the audience feels nothing; there was no emotional connection between the audience and the characters. I also feel that by leaving out the land and by not connecting the land with the people we lose a crucial part of the story. Not once in the movie do we see a peach.
The censorship of the movie destroyed Steinbeck's message. The book has a strong message of community, working together and building relationships to get through hard times. Steinbeck's way of saying this was "I" turning into "we" and if the "we" didn't form than everyone would fail. The movies message was that the Joads "are the people" and the people live on and that they were winning because they were still surviving.
I do understand that if the movie wasn't censored it would never have been produced but I feel that if you cannot do a novel like The Grapes of Wrath justice then don't try.