Book versus Film: THE DARK FIELDS / LIMITLESS

(For this week's featured article, I'd like to try something ScreenAnarchy hasn't done in a while: I'm going to be talking about a novel that's (relatively) recently been adapted into a film. How did it turn out on screen? Did it do the source material justice? What worked, and what didn't? And most importantly, which one comes out on top?

It should go without saying what follows contains major spoilers for both the book and the film in question.

This time it's Limitless (2011), directed by Neil Burger and written by Leslie Dixon, adapted from the novel The Dark Fields (2001) by Alan Glynn.)

If Neil Burger's Limitless gets one thing right above all else, it's a fantastic example of how boilerplate Hollywood filmmaking can latch onto a thoughtful, sober premise and suck the life out of it by the time the final credits roll. Based on novelist Alan Glynn's book The Dark Fields, Limitless starts as a snappy, vaguely topical techno-thriller driven by a fairly neat idea - Eddie (Bradley Cooper), a perennial loser, a writer down on his luck, discovers a 'smart drug' that enables him to be a success at anything he tries... only there's a price for this he wasn't anticipating. But Burger and his scriptwriter Leslie Dixon can't seem to work out what story they're telling - a morality play? One long chase sequence? A bit of pseudo-science for the peanut gallery? - and by the time Limitless turns into the home stretch, it's long since lost any real emotional weight it ever managed to lift from the source material. A ludicrous deus ex machina and an ending that cheerily renounces the idea there should be any kind of morality in the whole thing are just the final nails in the coffin.

No one man should have all that power

So what went wrong? Well - at the start of his commentary track, and several times in the forgettable EPK fluff that pads out the home video release, Neil Burger describes Limitless as being about power. And human intelligence, yes, and a bunch of other stuff if you've listened to it but the point being, none of this is what I took away from reading The Dark Fields, least of all an excuse to stick Yeezy on the Limitless trailer. As far as I'm concerned, if Alan Glynn's book is about anything, it's about addiction. It's about being stuck in a rut and finding your way out through some kind of chemical crutch - whether it's a legal or illegal substance - and it's about the human capacity to fool yourself, to continue drinking or popping or snorting whatever the hell it is even though you know you're only racing headlong towards a brick wall in the process. Burger, Dixon and several of the cast and crew also mention the idea Limitless asks 'What would you do?' Now most works of fiction that do this tend to imply you'd come out on top because, well, you're awesome, right? Neo took the red pill. So would you, obviously.

The Dark Fields is a little different. Limitless does actually follow the book surprisingly closely to begin with, but it misses out several details Leslie Dixon probably didn't think would matter to a mainstream audience - and in retrospect, these seem like a good indication of where the film was headed. Both open with the hero meeting an ex-brother-in-law who cajoles him into trying the mystery pill that drives the story (MDT for the book, NZT for the film), but Glynn makes it explicitly clear his Eddie used to be a fairly heavy recreational drug user, as did Eddie's ex-wife Melissa. Dixon never mentions any of this beyond acknowledging her Eddie is well aware the ex-brother-in-law was once a coke dealer. Winners don't do drugs, right? It might seem like a little thing, but Glynn's approach sets up a great deal of The Dark Fields. Both versions of the story have their Eddie experiencing increasingly disturbing side effects from the drug, but despite Neil Burger breaking out some remarkably inventive VFX to portray these it's arguably for nothing, given Leslie Dixon fails to invest her Eddie with any sense of personal responsibility.

Free your mind

Limitless never really progresses beyond "Whoa! What's happening to me?", where The Dark Fields swiftly moves on to "What am I doing?" and ultimately "What have I done?". Alan Glynn's Eddie realises pretty quickly the drug is doing him some severe damage, but the rising tension comes from the examination of how he decides he's going to keep taking the stuff anyway (with the dogged persistence of the committed addict) as much as it comes from the time he loses to epileptic flash-forwards. Glynn makes it very clear Eddie is actively ignoring every bit of good advice or warning sign he gets; he tries, Lord love him but even when Melissa reappears, overweight, her health and psyche in ruins, and spells out that if Eddie carries on taking these pills he will die the stakes are sky-high by this point. He's mired in complicated financial deals, needs the drug to see them through and cannot face weaning himself off it. Dixon simply turns the whole sequence into another exercise in absolving her hero of any responsibility.

Unlike The Dark Fields, Dixon ignores that Melissa's supposed to have suffered irreparable neural damage, and that she chose to take the stuff years ago because she was in the habit of trying new and exciting pharmaceuticals. And Neil Burger plasters British actress Anna Friel with age makeup as Melissa - not to a ridiculous extent, but it's that much harder to take the scene seriously when Cooper-as-Eddie looks little worse than he did as the schlubby nobody at the start of the film. In Dixon's hands, the questions the drug poses are no more complex than any of Indiana Jones' moral dilemmas; Melissa opened the Ark of the Covenant by taking the stuff, and she's only a supporting character, so she serves as a quick PSA, nothing more. Dixon even introduces a love interest, Eddie's girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish), who can't wait to get shot of him at the start yet falls back into his arms once he's rich, successful and multilingual. Circumstances mean Lindy ends up sampling NZT to get the two of them out of danger: that wasn't me, she says afterwards. Voila! Never mind Eddie chose to take the stuff, or that he's supposedly hooked through the nose: it's not him! If he stops, everything will be fine.

South of the border

And it gets worse: Dixon does acknowledge The Dark Fields' most significant bit of foreshadowing, where it's made clear Glynn's Eddie is damned, damned, damned, but then... she just lets it tail off into nothing. Alan Glynn has a sub-plot where the TV is constantly discussing the breakdown in America's foreign policy towards Mexico, and while this is admittedly one of the weakest parts of the book it sets Eddie up for a fling with a prominent Mexican artist's wife. Flying high on the drug, it is strongly implied that Eddie murders her. Never confirmed: though that's important too. Glynn does his best work in The Dark Fields when he's dissecting Eddie's mounting paranoia, thoughts free-wheeling endlessly in all directions, and the idea he can't remember what happened that night is a symbol of how he's lost control of his life altogether. Dixon turns it into some actress in a bit part dropping her top - hey, kids, was that sideboob? - and then just... drops the whole thing in favour of tiresome conspiracy theorising.

Both book and film spend a lot of time on Eddie's dealings with financial tycoon Carl van Loon (Robert de Niro), but where The Dark Fields uses it as symptomatic of Eddie's mounting addiction - how can he stop taking the drug when there's no way he'd be making all this money without it? - Limitless thinks this plot thread is enough to carry the film itself. Glynn winds up The Dark Fields with Eddie made to confront what it was behind his meteoric rise. He's forced to acknowledge he probably did commit murder. He realises he can't have what he really wants - a way to make it up to Melissa and everyone else he hurt in the past - and he has to admit he'll never be able to find who made the drug, to secure himself a continued supply. All of the big business is clearly secondary to the main issue. After all, you don't really care that much whether Eddie gets his millions when everything else about his situation is so clearly hopeless.

Robert de Niro's waiting

Dixon and Burger seem to think Robert de Niro in his omnipotent financier role can get the audience invested by sheer force of will. Limitless, like The Dark Fields, has naughty Russian gangsters interfering with Eddie's plans but where the novel used this plot thread as one more indication of how little control Eddie really had over events Limitless seems to see it as a threat coming between Eddie and Carl van Loon's (De Niro's) money. Why should you care? Lord knows. And just to ram it home that Limitless is all about taking power by any means necessary, Dixon tacks on one of the most insulting codas Hollywood's ever resorted to. Remember all that stuff about how Eddie will die if he gives up NZT? How it's not him, it's the drug? Forget it - he's magically found a new supply, and when De Niro-as-Van Loon turns up for one last attempt at winning him over, oh, look - Eddie's somehow magically managed to shake off the side-effects and kept all the benefits. Seriously. The gangsters are all dead, he's fit, happy, healthy and he's backing down Robert de Niro because he's god damned Superman. Alan Glynn's Eddie winds up waiting to die in a cheap motel room, for God's sake! You know, because he's an addict who's hooked on a dangerous illegal substance we've been told will kill him?

Still, ultimately, Limitless' main problem isn't really that the writer and director mistakenly think it's about power: it's arguably not really 'about' anything. The Dark Fields was originally written ten years ago, and we're told several times in the supplementary material Leslie Dixon picked it up in a second-hand store and thought it'd make a film. To be fair to her, this is a thing scriptwriters frequently do, but something feels horribly mercenary about the process in this case. Some guy wrote a book way back when and no-one cared, so hey, why should anyone be that bothered if I turn it into easy mainstream pablum that'll hopefully earn eight digits or higher off a modest investment for the rights? Well... because it's lazy, and thoughtless, and dumb. Limitless takes a neat hook, a searching question and an anti-hero we can identify with and squanders their potential. You don't need to have read the original novel to realise that - but if you do, it does make it a lot more obvious. Still, the film does have a much better name. So there's that.

The Dark Fields, 1, Limitless, 0.

(Limitless is available to buy now on home video - and while the film may not be up to much, the BluRay sure is pretty.)

(The Dark Fields is available to buy now on Amazon (UK link) - it's a great, great read, and at the time of writing was priced around a dollar on Kindle. Seriously, just get it.)

(If you've read this far without getting bored out of your mind, have a cookie! And if there's any other book to film you think ScreenAnarchy should take a look at, let us know in the comments.)