And Then There Were None: Well, Well Miss Claythorne

BBC's And Then There Were None (2015), an adaptation of Christie's famous mystery thriller, sparked my interest over the week, and I was able to watch the three-hour long miniseries over the course of a few days.

There have been many adaptations of this novel, and most of them change some facet of the original story, some more dramatically than others. If you haven't read the novel or seen any adaptations and don't want the story spoiled for you, be careful how you read on (I will try not to reveal the killer at least).

The main thing that I enjoy looking for in adaptations of Christie is how the characters will (or will not) be fleshed out and re-constituted on film. Sometimes adaptations make you sympathize with a villain in ways that the book never did, and sometimes the reverse happens and characters you felt sorry for seem much less appealing when you watch them on film.

Sometimes, too, the production clearly has a particular version of the story it wants to tell. I think that's the case with And Then There Were None (2015).

The story began and ended with Vera Claythorne, the last survivor on the island. Most adaptations tend to focus on Vera one way or another, so this is not surprising. Vera's viewpoint is the most emphasized throughout the novel. Vera is also the character who seems most sympathetic for the audience. She's young, female, and modest. We feel sorry for her. She seems vulnerable. In some versions, that's exactly what Vera really is. These are the versions that usually don't keep the original ending. Christie herself rewrote the story for the stage and made Vera (and Lombard) more likable.

Well, she had to. No one wants to sympathize with a heartless murderer, after all.

But that's the question that's always been at the heart of the novel, and the one that this production really did not hesitate to embrace fully: Who is capable of murder? And if we all are, then who is really innocent? And what does it mean to be innocent or guilty? Who judges? Who executes?

In this version, unlike past versions, there was no redemption romance between Vera and Philip Lombard. I say "redemption" because by giving them a romance (and allowing them to survive), most versions of the film end up white washing the two characters' crimes, like having Vera be innocent after all (her guilt is the most difficult to substantiate) or having the Philip Lombard's friend (who is innocent of Lombard's crimes) pose as Lombard. After all, we can't sympathize with two killers in love, can we?

Or maybe we can. Or maybe a killer can't love. Whatever the case, Christie didn't feel the need to answer those questions, and in not answering them I think she created something really interesting. More interesting than her usual puzzles. She created a story in which the audience is confronted with uncertainty and confusion regarding characters' true natures and emotions. In which we are, in other words, confronted with reality.

The way the film told the stories of the murderers/victims in flashbacks that lacked narration or any real framing was a superb way to unfold the uncertainty of who these people really were and what motivated them. Especially Vera.

I knew Vera's story already, but even so I could see how a first time viewer would be drawn to the real mystery, not of who is killing these people, but whether Vera Claythorne (and the others) are really killers at heart and what that means, since they are also complex human beings with common impulses that we all share.

We are also strongly encouraged to root for Lombard and Vera to get together (boy, do they) and to survive (no comment). What is brilliant is that even at the very end, when Vera has shot Lombard and is choking in the noose that she put her own head in (literally), we are completely uncertain if there is anything redeeming about Vera. Did she really love Hugo? Did she love Lombard? Did she love anyone but herself?

And the surprising answer is that it seems like Vera's biggest priority was always her own survival at the expense of someone else. Ruthlessly she sells out Lombard if it will get her head out of the hangman's noose (but it can't, of course). Any romance that we could have imagined between them is destroyed in a few words. We get to see that this person we thought might have been different really isn't. Is possibly the worst of them all.

Why? Because along the way the others have their opportunities to confess and make peace with their past crimes. And many of them, surprisingly I guess, actually do. This is why it's very interesting that Blore points out that he thinks they might already be dead and are now in hell. He's shocked and upset, but it's a really apt metaphor that helps us understand the emotional arc of the story. Which is basically that you have ten people who, more or less, at some point decided that another human life was less important than their own and now they are experiencing the same thing -- their punishment or just reward. It drives some of them to real repentence, I think. Others it breaks down completely. And a few, like Lombard and Vera (and maybe Marston would have gone the same way), aren't going to play by the rules. They want to survive above everything else and are unwilling to accept the consequences, that they've been out-played.

Ironically, Lombard is the most honest of the bunch - he readily admits his guilt early on and acknowledges that he's always known "it would catch up with [him]." But he isn't ready to die just yet. It takes the others a bit longer to come to terms with their pasts, but eventually McArthur, Blore, Armstrong, and even Wargrave to a certain extent admit that they might have been wrong in what they did. There is some kind of release in confession for them, even though they still die.

Vera never confesses. The closest she gets is allowing "Cyril" to take her to her scheduled appointment with death (see what I did there?). And in the novel, that is Vera's confession and admission of guilt. But in the film, due to certain problems in adapting the ending, it isn't. Vera is still unrepentent. This is harsh because she's also the audience's pov character. In a typical Christie, Vera would be the murderer -- she has the emotional arc that Christie so often described (probably best in Death on the Nile); the character who is least suspected, very sympathetic, and utterly unrepentant because taking another human life has robbed her of her own humanity.

It makes her the least sympathetic in the end. At least to me. And I thought that was a very bold move.

Overall I think the miniseries film is a very good adaptation, but a very, very dark one. Darker, perhaps, even than Christie might have meant it to be.