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E9. Passing
18 Plays4 days ago
Join us to discuss Passing by Nella Larsen. For this episode, we dusted off our research skills to analyze race, safety, and the queer undertones of this 1929 novella.
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Transcript
Reunion and Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Two nerds went to college and found each other in the English department basement and became instant friends. Eight years and three degrees later, they're reunited.
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to Book Club The Movie The Podcast, where we read, watch, and discuss books and their film adaptations. I'm your host, Jen. And I'm your other host, Em. We hope you read the book. But if you didn't, here's the summary.
Exploration of 'Passing' and Nella Larsen's Background
00:00:55
Speaker
Published nearly a century ago, in 1929, the novel Passing, written by Nella Larson, tells the story of two biracial women, Irene Westover-Redfield and Claire Kendry-Bellieu, who reunite after years apart.
00:01:11
Speaker
Both women are light-skinned enough to pass as white, but they've chosen different paths. Irene embraces her life as the wife of a doctor and mother within Harlem's Black middle class, while Claire lives as a white woman, trading her Black heritage and community for the financial and social opportunities afforded to her by her marriage to a wealthy, albeit super racist, white man.
00:01:35
Speaker
As the lives of both women become increasingly intertwined, Larson uses the relationship to explore questions of race, privilege, desire, and authenticity. Born Nellie Walker in 1891 in Chicago to a Danish immigrant mother and a Black father from the Danish West Indies, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands, the author of Passing,
00:01:57
Speaker
Nella Larsen grew up navigating the racial boundaries of early 20th century America. After her father passed away, her mother later remarried a white Danish immigrant whose last name Larsen took as her own.
00:02:09
Speaker
During the 1920s, Nella Larsen lived in Harlem with her then husband, prominent physicist Dr. Elmer Imes, and was part of Harlem's Black professional class, which included other historical figures such as W.E. Dubois, Walter White, James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes. In 1930, Nella Larson was the first black woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, a mere five years after the fellowship was established, and it's still ongoing today. Larson used the fellowship to travel Europe for several years, where she worked on a third novel, which was never published.
00:02:46
Speaker
Larson returned to New York in 1937 after her divorce was completed, but she stopped writing and returned to her previous professional field of nursing and became an administrator until she passed in 1964 at the age I wonder if she would have written a novel based on her nursing career at some point.
Speculative Fiction: Nella Larsen's Potential Works
00:03:05
Speaker
I have a lot of medical people in my family, several nurses, so that would have been pretty interesting to me, I think.
00:03:12
Speaker
Yeah, and I think she would have had stories to tell. She, for a time, at the beginning of her nursing career, she worked at the Tuskegee Institute and became a head nurse at the John A. Andrew Memorial Hospital.
00:03:24
Speaker
And she also worked in the Bronx through the 1918 flu pandemic in a mostly white neighborhood um with mostly white colleagues. So she's, I mean, she was certainly a professional in her field, an authority figure, and she lived some experiences.
00:03:43
Speaker
I would have wanted the bird flu novel, I think. Or it wasn't the bird flu. The 1918 flu. That's the flu novel that I want. I don't know where bird flu came from. That just flew out of my mouth. Haha.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, you know, having lived through 2020, getting a pandemic novel written by Nella Larson would be ah would have been pretty epic.
Juneteenth and Cultural Significance
00:04:09
Speaker
First off, happy Pride Month to all who celebrate. This episode is coming out the day before Juneteenth, which if you don't know, is the United States federal holiday that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans.
00:04:25
Speaker
So quick history lesson. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, but it took over two years for this proclamation to reach the Deep South.
00:04:38
Speaker
On June 19th, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger, he landed in Galveston, Texas, and he read the General Orders No. 3, which officially informed the people of Texas that the Emancipation Proclamation was in fact being enforced and all the enslaved people were now free.
00:04:57
Speaker
However, June 19th did not become an official federal holiday in the United States until 2021, which, fun fact, is also consequently the same year that this movie came out, um although it originally aired in November of 2021.
Rebecca Hall's Direction and Film Adaptation Insights
00:05:16
Speaker
Rebecca Hall, an English actress of the silver screen and stage, made her directorial debut with the release of Passing in 2021. Shortly before reading the book and writing the script, she learned that her maternal grandfather spent his life passing as white. He was the son of a man born into slavery, and the topic was taboo to talk about in Rebecca Hall's family.
00:05:38
Speaker
In order to connect to him, she turned to learning more through art. She found passing by Nella Larson and wrote a script for it before even having the movie rights. Which a note that it wasn't so much taboo like with her mother directly so much as her mother also didn't know anything. It just wasn't talked about, period. Her grandfather didn't talk about it. Yeah. And I think she was on an episode of Finding Your Roots earlier.
00:06:06
Speaker
that I didn't have time to watch, but I'm pretty sure that she was on that show also. um Fun fact, ah Rebecca Hall, she was actually at the Met Gala and she ran into David Bowie, of all people, and they started talking about books. And he asked her, have you read this book called Passing? And she was like, David, you are not going to believe it. That is my favorite book. And I've actually written a script. um even though I don't have the rights to it. And so they gushed over Passing by Nella Larson and he encouraged her to make the movie happen.
00:06:38
Speaker
And here we are now. Yeah. In the book, we open with Irene reading and reflecting on a letter that she received from Claire, an old friend whom she had a chance encounter with two years before in Chicago. The letter is postmarked in New York. And as my notes said, this means that Claire's already at your front door, Irene.
00:07:00
Speaker
She's here. From the very first chapter, we are in a close third point of view. Everything is filtered through Irene's perspective and the stability of her perspective changes throughout the book, but we can talk more about that later.
00:07:14
Speaker
Irene seems to be kind of torred between exiling Claire, not wanting to see her, like telling herself, I'm done, never again, but also embracing her. So Irene is just completely conflicted through the whole story.
00:07:27
Speaker
And by the end of part one, chapter one, the story takes us back to Chicago two years before when Irene sought a breeze at the Drayton Hotel, which is a fictionalized version of the Drake Hotel that's very much IRL in Chicago.
00:07:42
Speaker
And fate brought her old friend Claire back into her life, which leads us to the movie opening where we open with a scene that shows Irene, played by Tessa Thompson, as passing for white while shopping for an out-of-stock book for her son's birthday, quickly followed by that same escape from the heat to the Drayton's breezy rooftop where she is stared down by an old friend, Claire Kendry, who's played by Ruth Naga, who Irene thinks is a suspecting white lady at first until she hears Claire's laugh.
Filmmaking Techniques: Black and White and Aspect Ratio
00:08:16
Speaker
And it's obviously interesting, you know, when you watch the movie, it's filmed in black and white. And we don't see that so much, especially with it being made in 2021, or i guess released in 2021. It was probably filmed in 2020 or before. but Either way, we don't see a lot of black and white movies and anymore. Whenever it happens, it comes across as a little bit pretentious, which it doesn't here.
00:08:39
Speaker
Right. And in an interview, Rebecca Hall said, this is a film about categories and an obsession with fitting everyone into containers or the containers that everyone else puts you in as well. The irony of black and white films is they're gray. There's nothing black or white about it ever.
00:08:56
Speaker
And so, Em, what do you think? Does removing color make race feel more visible or less visible? Yeah. ah Definitely less visible because I remember um at one point Claire's standing next to her very white husband and I that was whenever I wrote down I'm like they look there's a lot of sameness here you know between their two different skin tones and in one article that I read actually ah Rebecca Hall she wanted to play with exposure and lighting not makeup so you know it's a little bit of both. Yeah.
00:09:27
Speaker
I agree. It's also interesting that it's not in like that full screen that we're used to now. It's filmed in the 4-3 almost a square, not a perfect square.
00:09:38
Speaker
That's the classic movie aspect ratio. I'm pretty sure that's what all movies on VHS were filmed in. That's what we would be the most familiar with. And what purpose do you think that served?
00:09:48
Speaker
I'm not 100% sure other than just classic movie vibes. If it was a real black and white film, not digital movie, then it was going to be in that ratio. That's just what was available. So I imagine it's just it's it's the classic way to do it.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah, I can see an argument for nostalgia, but the amateur film critic in me, I was like, oh, we've got like our characters are like boxed in is kind of what it felt like. um And it's also like a narrowing perspective, which we're going to talk more about, like how the novel narrows perspective.
00:10:27
Speaker
But We don't have the full screen. We can't see what feels like everything because it's not all filling up our screen. And I won't say that it felt like claustrophobic at times.
00:10:38
Speaker
I could be wrong, but I think it was a way for Rebecca Hall, the director, to imitate Nella Larson's like narrative style using different tools. Interesting.
Racial Passing: Historical Context and Personal Identity
00:10:53
Speaker
were two white women and therefore cannot relate to the themes of race in this book. Luckily, there are tons of stories out there just like this one for us to read and learn from.
00:11:05
Speaker
i would like to begin this section by defining the term passing. So passing, through all my research, is defined as socially presenting yourself as another race.
00:11:18
Speaker
It's a term that's really unique to black Americans, um especially with the US legal point of view and how the laws used to be written here. um I'm specifically referencing the one drop rule that determined that anyone with any black ancestry, even one person in their lineage, in their lineage was classified as black, no matter how they presented themselves. These laws, they weren't written until the early 20th century, oddly enough, which was decades after the Civil War. And they also weren't deemed unconstitutional until 1967. Do you want to talk about how passing is presented in the story? Yeah, in the story, we learn about passing through the experiences of Irene Redfield and Claire Kendry, especially their experiences together. So we have Claire, um she's married to a white man, John Belyeu, played by Alexander Skarsgรฅrd in the movie, who doesn't know that his wife is biracial. And on the flip side of that, we have Irene, who's married to a black man and lives a contented life among Harlem's elite black community.
00:12:25
Speaker
And when they initially reconnect at the Drayton Hotel, Claire seems secure in her white passing identity and isn't careful when telling Irene about the past 12 years, catching her up to speed. And it really seems like while Claire enjoys the thrill of passing, Irene passes only very occasionally for convenience, i.e. to escape the heat on this breezy rooftop and have a nice tea.
00:12:50
Speaker
Irene does so under the pretense that she's usually mistaken for Italian or Hispanic, specifically that she specifically states in the narrative that white people were so stupid about such things. It reminds me of that clip that went mega viral either last year or five years ago. I don't know. Time is not real. But an interviewer was telling Rashida Jones that she looks so tan and so tropical. And Rashida Jones had to respond with, I'm ethnic. Yeah. And then also kind of in the ways that our main characters pass, we have later in part one, Irene meets Claire's husband, John, in a small group setting.
00:13:29
Speaker
And John, just by dent of the environment that he's in, right, he believes without question that Irene is white. And we'll also note that in the book, there's a third Black woman present. Her name's Gertrude. But she was omitted from the movie, and we can talk about that a little bit later. But John, sometimes called Jack, um he's just an awful person, and he's incredibly racist. And it's in both the book and the movie, in this scene specifically, where he calls Claire racist nickname, which we're not going to say on the podcast. But if you want to know what it is, you can read the book or
Character Analysis and Narrative Techniques
00:14:09
Speaker
watch the movie. But it just really reveals...
00:14:11
Speaker
how racist he is and the the irony, the situational irony of that scene that he is using this derogatory term as like an affectionate nickname for his wife in front of three black women who he believes are white is just thick, thick with irony.
00:14:30
Speaker
I mean, sure, that's like the little piece of irony from that scene. But the way that he describes that it's not that he doesn't dislike Black people, it's that he hates them. And then he talks about how much his wife, Claire, hates them and they can't even have a Black maid. And it's, I read it in the book first, but still watching the movie and then him coming in and saying, hello, nickname still just...
00:14:58
Speaker
still shocked me a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Just, I was expecting it, but I wasn't expecting it. I don't know. Alexander Skarsgรฅrd is tall and pretty and just, it shocked me a little bit still. Think about if you hadn't read the book first, right? Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
I think for me, the shock value was lessened because I knew it was, or I figured it was coming. Because, you know, I think in the mood, like, It's a significant plot point yeah in the book. And I couldn't see the movie leaving it out.
00:15:31
Speaker
During part two of the book, while at the Negro Welfare League dance, Hugh Wentworth, played by Bill Camp in the movie, he's a white author who hangs out in Harlem all the time, he asks Irene if a white woman could ever pass as a black woman, and Irene tells him, no, it does not work both ways. We would be able to tell.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, and especially like back then in in the era of like like Jim Crow laws and... um rampant lynchings. Like why would a white woman want to pass as a black woman? Um, but even in more modern times, you know, I'm going to talk about Spokane any chance I get. So I'm gonna. And, um, for modern times, the the most famous example i can think of, um,
00:16:19
Speaker
and maybe the only example anyone can really give is Rachel Dolezal. She later legally changed her name um to a very African sounding one. um She was a white woman. She was totally white, both sides of her family. And she did lots of things to her appearance to appear um biracial. or of mixed race. And um ultimately, she became the president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP.
00:16:52
Speaker
And it took like her parents submitting like their DNA tests to be like, our daughter is white. She's very, very white. She also taught African-American history. like She was really deep into it. um I heard on TikTok that she had a fairly good score on Rate My Professor there for a while. And I looked it up, and now there's only like six responses. So I don't know if they took some of it down or what.
00:17:19
Speaker
One of the most interesting things about the novel is its point of view. It's written in a super close third POV entirely from Irene's perspective.
00:17:31
Speaker
So we only know what Irene sees, what she hears, what she suspects and, and what she interprets. Typically third person feels objective because there's no eye um, it's he, she,
00:17:46
Speaker
Proper pronoun Irene, proper pronoun Claire, proper pronoun Brian. But because we're so close to Irene, but we're not in first person, not using i it's easy to forget that we're not getting an objective account of the events as they unfold, which becomes especially important as the novel progresses and Irene's anxiety over Claire's presence in her life begins to overtake her.
00:18:11
Speaker
Right? The novel never really outright tells us that Irene is unreliable. That would be ridiculous. But it does constantly give us reasons to question her point of view and what she is seeing and thinking. I mean, is Irene jealous of Claire? Is she attracted to Claire? Both? We're not really sure. is Brian, played by Andre Holland in the movie, is he cheating on Irene with Claire? Or is Irene reading into something that's not there? Or is Irene displacing her feelings for Claire onto Brian?
00:18:44
Speaker
Are Irene's fears real or are they projections? But with the point of view being so close to Irene's perspective, these are all presented as facts, but we don't get concrete evidence, so we can't be entirely sure.
00:18:59
Speaker
What did you think about those sections where we were only getting i Irene's half of the conversation? I think there was one scene that was over the phone and I didn't really think that much of it. um But then we had another section that I remembered to note down. It was ah page 113 on our copies um where she's at a party and she has a short conversation with Claire and then what seems to be like short goodbye conversations with the rest of her party guests.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I wasn't bothered by like the phone conversation um because, you know, it kind of feels like we're a fly on the wall. So when she's on the phone, of course, we can't hear what the other person is saying. We can only hear what Irene is saying. But with the scene that you're talking about where Irene's interacting with Claire, like ah she's not in a great mental state at that time because she's...
00:19:53
Speaker
you thought maybe she put something together with Brian and Claire being an item. I didn't super like it. Like I wanted to hear if I'm a fly on the wall because it's in third person, right? I should get to hear whatever's happening in the room um as long as I'm within earshot of my main character that everything's filtered through, i e Irene.
00:20:16
Speaker
But I can kind of see why Larson did that. I mean, it's like narrowing our perspective even further. It's like continuing to prevent us from fully understanding the other characters. And it's also like a good reminder that Irene is like the world we're experiencing is being filtered through irene So like an interesting writerly move.
00:20:41
Speaker
Well, I liked it. I kind of took it as because we're not getting the other half of conversations that she probably wasn't really paying that close attention to it to begin with, or she didn't care, or it wasn't important because she was focused on these other things.
00:20:56
Speaker
So I liked it. I think they could be overdone easily, but it really only happened like three times in the whole book. Right. I mean, with the book being so short, it's not like it was overdone.
00:21:07
Speaker
even in it like a 300 page book, I would only want to see it like three max. Regarding the movie, the camera, um Rebecca Hall is directing the camera, right? And so that stays really close to Irene so that we know we're viewing the world from her perspective.
00:21:25
Speaker
um But the movie did not carry over any internal narration. So we're still only seeing what's unfolding. We don't we We can guess at what she's thinking based on her reactions and whatnot, but like we don't get to actually be inside of her head like we do in the book.
00:21:42
Speaker
So um do you think we lost anything with that? um I mean, I would think so. We didn't get any of the many sentences where she remarks on how beautiful Claire is. um We didn't get any of that like interiority. um As far as like the level of like unreliable narrator goes, it's a movie we're watching it happen. So that's already going to skew it to begin with. um I think if we had...
00:22:14
Speaker
I don't know if a voiceover from her would have like felt right. um Yeah. But having- It's to execute. Yeah, having any thoughts from her, whether it's like her confiding in somebody or just talking to herself in a room or something, just to kind of have more of her inner thoughts um that kind of go against what we're witnessing on the screen, I think that probably would have been helpful.
00:22:40
Speaker
as far as keeping her an unreliable narrator, because I didn't find her so in the movie.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. One other point I wanted to bring up on that kind of similar vein was that Without the internal dialogue, the internal narration from Irene that we get in the book, I think as the viewer of the movie, we are like a little freer to interpret the events as they unfold rather than like automatically accepting Irene's perspective and like Irene's account of the events.
00:23:22
Speaker
Does make sense? Kind of. I mean, I personally wasn't automatically accepting her POV in the book either, but that just might've been how I was reading it.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, i don't know. She had me hook, line, and sinker until, you know, i don't know, like page 70 plus onwards. I was like, she is struggling mentally. um And now I'm not so sure.
00:23:51
Speaker
i think I'm not so sure I should trust her. I think in the book for me, I was just like, yes, some really like weird crap is going down. i don't know, but we can figure this out together.
00:24:03
Speaker
You mentioned before we started reading this book that there were notes of queer or hidden desire, partially why we chose it for June.
Themes of Queer Desire and Interpersonal Dynamics
00:24:12
Speaker
um I didn't get a whole lot of queer desire personally. um When you mentioned it as one of the themes, I was expecting a kiss or something. Like kind of like whenever ah we were doing Brokeback Mountain and you were expecting more um hockey movie, hockey, hockey book.
00:24:31
Speaker
Heated rivalry, but with cowboys. Thank you. Yeah, you were expecting more heated rivalry, but cowboys, and that didn't exactly happen. um i was I was expecting ah ladies kissing maybe once or twice. Yeah.
00:24:47
Speaker
But yeah, it it was mostly for me just Irene talking about how beautiful Claire is. And I could see that as being more of like a metaphorical desire, kind of like a desire for the security that whiteness affords.
00:24:59
Speaker
That was what I was reading into it. Yeah, I mean, i don't feel like Claire is presented as like the picture of security.
00:25:11
Speaker
um no not Claire, just like in a general sense. Claire is definitely not not even a little bit secure. Claire should not be invited over anymore, I think.
00:25:22
Speaker
Claire's a hot mess, respectfully. a beautiful hot mess. A beautiful hot mess. Per Irene's description. Yeah.
00:25:32
Speaker
And speaking of which, like, it I think it's nuanced, right? And that's why it's like not an overt queer story. But there's like, there's absolutely an undercurrent there. um Like, that's like literary scholars. It's not just me, right? Literary scholars have written about this for, you know,
00:25:54
Speaker
a century, i mean, almost. um The book is not quite a century old. But um Irene's obsessed with Claire, right? She's always thinking about her, sometimes in a positive light, sometimes in a negative light, but she's she's obsessed. She's constantly thinking about her. she's Anytime Claire...
00:26:14
Speaker
arrives. Irene's commenting on her clothes. She's commenting on her appearance. She's talking about her lips, her eyes. Like, she is a girl crush. um Also, like, her husband Brian, like, their marriage is not the the picture of, like, sexy matrimony that we all probably hope for um She honestly doesn't seem, like, that end into him.
00:26:40
Speaker
And it's notably, like, unromantic, I mean, not a romantic, but it's just not not super romantic, right? And um they're raising kids, so maybe there's an element of that. But specifically, I want to point out, even from the very beginning, right? Chapter one in my book, it's page six. I think there's even like evidence that Claire has a little bit of a girl crush on Irene, although since we're in Irene's head all the time, we can't really know that.
00:27:12
Speaker
But when Irene is reading the letter letter that she got from Claire, Claire writes, "'For I am lonely, so lonely, cannot help longing to be with you again as I have never longed for anything before. And I have wanted many things in my life. You can't know how in this pale life of mine, I am all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that I once thought I was glad to be free of. It's like an ache, a pain that never ceases.'" sheets upon thin sheets of it and ending finally with it's your fault reeney dear by the way irene's nickname is reeney um at least partly for i wouldn't now perhaps have this terrible this wild desire if i hadn't seen you that time in chicago dot dot dot so that's
00:27:59
Speaker
That's the letter from Claire, and she's yearning. She is longing for Irene and also maybe for like Black community. um However, Irene's response is, brilliant red patches flamed in Irene Redfield's warm olive cheeks.
00:28:16
Speaker
That time in Chicago, the words stood out from among the many paragraphs of other words, bringing them bringing with them a clear, sharp remembrance in which even now, after two years, humiliation, resentment, and rage were mingled.
00:28:33
Speaker
So Irene is blushing. at Claire's letter. and it's been two years. She hasn't heard from her friend in two years. And she still has like a physical response to Claire's words and to the memory of the, their chance encounter in Chicago.
00:28:52
Speaker
Um, and I just, and yes, there's, there's so many emotions wrapped up, humiliation, resentment, and rage all mingled. But I think she also has like a girl crush.
00:29:05
Speaker
I will concede that the letter is pretty gay. i just didn't read it in the book. So I think I just kind of jumped right over it. and I'm like, yep, claire's Claire's weird. Claire's an odd one. Dope. She, yep.
00:29:18
Speaker
And then just kept going. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the movie, right, like with the camera angles and everything, we are we are looking Claire up and down through Irene's perspective, right? There's close-ups of Claire's like face of her smile. um And of course, like her laugh, but you can't really like have a close-up of the laugh, but it like- Like the camera makes it intimate, I think as well. um And I guess in the movie, like she, her husband is reading like either this letter or a letter to her while they're both in bed. And Irene is just like, stop it. And he keeps reading it as if it's like really sensual, like intentionally sensual.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah. Brian's picking up on it too. and there's also, speaking of the movie, there's like this this one scene where... um Irene is trying to like take a nap. She's like rolling around on the bed. i'm not really sure if she's just like in a fugue state, but upon first watching, I was like, oh, she's masturbating. She's masturbating to Claire.
00:30:28
Speaker
She's and like, you know, we get flashes of Claire and flashes of Brian. And um it's like, I think that she's thinking about Claire while she's like a sort of like nap masturbating. um And then She's like opening her eyes and like the screen's blurry. um And she thinks that she sees Claire, but then as her eyes focus, you know, Brian materializes and it's like, she doesn't want him to be there. She wants Claire sitting at the foot of the bed, waking her up from this nap.
00:31:03
Speaker
Is that what she was doing in the dream? Because I just kind of took it as like a fuzzy, weird dream sequence about her worrying about the two of them together. Like Irene, not Irene, ah of Brian and Claire together. um That was just where my mind immediately went because that's where like the concern was at that point.
Marriage Tensions and Climactic Confrontation
00:31:21
Speaker
um Like I know that they're not or she's not super happy with him and he's stressed with work and wishes he hadn't become a doctor because he hates sick people. um but Him at the beginning, I hate sick people. And I'm like, you and me both, Brian, kind of. um It's me. I'm the sick person. um
00:31:44
Speaker
But she's not happy with Brian also because he really wants to pack up her and the kids and to move to Brazil. um There was a fairly big movement of Black people in the United States that wanted to move to Brazil at the time, but Irene really cared about her community at home and also her routine and just wasn't into it. Well,
00:32:10
Speaker
let's go ahead and talk about the endings. There are definitely spoilers ahead, so keep listening at your own risk. All right, here's what happened. In part three of the book, Irene is shopping in downtown New York City with Felice Freeland, played by Antoinette Crowe Legacy in the movie, when they unexpectedly encounter John Belyeu, Claire's super racist husband, on the sidewalk.
00:32:37
Speaker
John immediately recognizes Irene, but when she doesn't acknowledge him, he notices she's walking with her much darker, complected friend, and then he just, like, seems to realize that Irene is black.
00:32:49
Speaker
And Irene tells no one about the encounter. Not Brian, not Claire. She doesn't even explain who he is to her friend, Felice. And a couple weeks later, Claire... Yeah, she though. She says, you just met the only person, the only white person that I've ever, like, passed in front of before.
00:33:08
Speaker
Right, but she should have said that is Claire's super racist, unsafe white husband. And yeah she doesn't tell Felice that. No, no, no, no. Like she like, okay, I guess she like kind of explains it, but she leaves out some really key details.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, like the most key details. I think Irene is tired at this point. um I think Irene was in shock, right? Like, I think she was just like, i cannot compute. Do not know what to do. well because he walks up to her and is like, oh, my gosh, it's that nice white lady that I met.
00:33:44
Speaker
Mrs. Redfield. Mrs. Redfield. Hey, how are you doing? Who is this you're walking with? I'm Alexander Skarsgรฅrd and I'm confused. Anyway, a couple of weeks go by. Irene still hasn't told Brian, hasn't told Claire, hasn't figured out how to tell them. And I think she's just like, I hope this goes away. Well, it doesn't. um Basically, everybody... in the in the book, her reasoning for it, just to touch on it, in the book, at least, her reasoning for it, which I don't think we really got this much like interior thought in the movie at all, um but she's worried that if Claire is found out and her husband leaves her, then Claire will run off with Brian. And then and that's not what she wants either.
00:34:29
Speaker
so at least in the book, that's why she didn't tell them. That's how she justifies it. Yeah. I don't think she really knows why she didn't tell anybody. I think she's just so uncertain about how to handle it. Yeah, I don't think that it was like a full thought, really. It was just, like you said, it was her reasoning for it.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, it was like she was having an argument with herself. Well, if I do this, then XYZ is going to โ she's ruminating. That's what it is. She's ruminating on what to do and then โ She never acts. She doesn't tell anyone. And then we fast forward to a couple weeks later where Claire, along with all their their social circle, um Claire attends this party at the Freelance and um Irene and Brian are both there as well. And partway through the party,
00:35:20
Speaker
It's interrupted by the one and only John Bellew who forces his way in to confront his passing wife. And in an extremely dramatic and ambiguous instant, John moves towards Claire who's standing next to Irene in front of an open sixth floor window. And basically Claire falls to her death.
00:35:42
Speaker
And as the reader in the book, we don't know if Claire jumped or if Irene pushed her, although Irene seems pretty certain that John didn't push her. um And even in the in the book, the i the narration says, like, Irene never let herself remember this clearly. So we know that we're not getting an objective view of the events, and we are totally in that uncertainty.
00:36:10
Speaker
And then in the movie, um it also does a great job of capturing the ambiguity um in the scene. All we get is this flash of Irene reaching out an arm in front of Claire's midsection as John lunges towards Claire. And we're left uncertain if Irene's arm...
00:36:28
Speaker
movement was out of protection or aggression. It couldn't really be determined exactly if Claire had been pushed or if she jumped. And it was declared in the last paragraph that she died by misadventure. So basically what this means is that she was doing something legal, deliberate, and careful. I looked up the definition. um But her actions still caused her to die. As I understand it, this could include bungee jumping with what you think is proper equipment or standing next to giant windows that open fully on the sixth floor.
00:37:00
Speaker
um Both of our copies, they included an introduction by the author Brit Bennett, and it talks about this a little bit more. i think the ending points more toward Irene being an unreliable narrator because she can't admit to herself even what happened to Claire. The final paragraph in the book wasn't actually included in the third printing of the book, leaving readers only with Irene passing out and then no mention of Claire's cause of death.
00:37:25
Speaker
Death by misadventure could also refer to the life that Claire was living, as in like her marriage to John. It was legal. It was something that she entered into deliberately, and she was kind of being careful um up until she ran into Irene and started to miss her old life. But in a roundabout way, it resulted in her death.
00:37:46
Speaker
And I will say from like a writing angle, I mean, that is the climaxiest climax that ever climaxed. And then the it the story's just over.
00:37:58
Speaker
You know, it's like one more page. And in the movie, it's like two more minutes, if that. um And it's just... It just is a sucker punch, right?
00:38:09
Speaker
In the book, we had Irene, like, kind of wandering around the apartment by herself for, like, a few paragraphs, like, after she falls. um Yeah. Not before, like, the declaration and the final paragraph or anything, but, like, we kind of... I don't remember if that happened in the movie or... Because everybody else ran down the six flights of stairs.
00:38:29
Speaker
Immediately. Immediately. And Irene wondered if she needed to bring her coat. And then the only thing that got her downstairs was that Brian needed his coat. Yeah.
00:38:40
Speaker
Her need to be a dutiful wife sprung her into action. think that's a shock is what that is. Oh, absolutely.
00:38:56
Speaker
Jen, would you like to do some nitpicking? I would. I would. m Let's do it.
Setting Changes and Adaptation Differences
00:39:03
Speaker
So minor thing. Right. But the movie changes where Irene and Claire grew up um in the book. They grew up in Chicago ah in the movie. It's just skipping straight to New York slash Harlem. Yeah.
00:39:19
Speaker
And I didn't like that. In the book, we have Irene, who's created this life in New York slash Harlem. She just goes back to Chicago for a visit. That's how she runs into Claire.
00:39:30
Speaker
But in the movie, Claire is lives in Chicago, but she's visiting New York. So, I mean... tomato, tomato, I guess.
00:39:41
Speaker
At the same time, like our author, Nella Larson, she grew up in Chicago. So i kind of viewed that upbringing as slightly autobiographical.
00:39:53
Speaker
And so I liked that about the book. I did like having the history of it um like we got in the in the book. So i I think, I mean, super tiny nitpick, but sure. Yeah, I think I would have liked it also. And then just because I'm easily confused lately, I guess I did write down, wait, where are we? Where are we in my notes? um As I was watching the movie, like, I think I had a post-it note saying I thought we were in New York. No question mark.
00:40:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Not, not sure on that one. Yeah, also something that I feel like we lost in the movie is um in the book, Larson describes clothes so vividly, especially Claire's, as seen through Irene's eyes. Ooh la la. And with the movie being shot in black and white, we kind of lost some of that, the colorful outfits. Obviously, they still wore period appropriate clothes, but it's just it was all gray, right?
00:41:00
Speaker
Yeah, the descriptions in the book were definitely thorough, i guess is how I would put it. I liked that the movie was in black and white, and I really appreciated that as an artistic decision, but we really missed out on some of those details that we got in the book, such as their clothes or even with um Claire's eyes. I feel like we just didn't get as much of that, too. um But honestly, what they were wearing wasn't super important to the story, other than like a characterization point.
00:41:32
Speaker
the the movie wasn't see yeah the The movie wasn't about these these these two gals and their beautiful clothes. Fair. Fair.
00:41:44
Speaker
Also, in one of the... i There was a photo of them in the um the tea room at the Drayton Hotel. ah Like a behind-the-scenes photo. And it is an all-color, super pretty, all green and stuff. And um Claire was wearing like a pink dress.
00:42:01
Speaker
So... you need to look that up, it was pretty cute. I'll look that up. Yeah. I personally only had one nitpick from the movie. I wish that Gertrude Martin was in the movie like she was in the book, the the third passing woman um in that little meeting with ah John, Claire's husband. um She is white passing and she's married to a white man, but her husband is aware of everything and doesn't really seem to care all that much. um It's a really interesting contrast compared to Claire's marriage and Irene's marriage.
00:42:38
Speaker
And I think the movie was just kind of missing that. Yeah, I agree. um We definitely i liked Gertrude being like this third other option that.
00:42:51
Speaker
um I won't pass like a moral judgment. on Like, I don't know if it was good or bad. I don't know if we can say, but I don't know. I liked that there, you know, it was maybe Gertrude presents like an alternate reality for a biracial woman.
00:43:09
Speaker
You can still be black and be happily married to a white man. the 1920s. In the as long as he's not a racist a-hole. Um, so yeah, but I will say the movie, I can see why they left it out because of pacing and just like making sense because in the book, Claire invites Irene over for like a little small party and also invites Gertrude who still lives in the area of Chicago. um
00:43:41
Speaker
where John happens to be, but in the movie, it's like Claire invites Irene to have her tea up in her hotel room because she's visiting from out of town. So it would be weird for Gertrude to be there as well. So they just eliminated Gertrude entirely, but I could see, you know, I guess I wish that they had found a way to include Gertrude in the larger group.
00:44:07
Speaker
She could have shown up at any of the other parties in New York. Right. they could have just had her based in New York or something. Exactly. And she could have shown up to like the dance night um with her white husband and been shown having a joyous time on the dance floor with him.
Concluding Thoughts and Future Episodes
00:44:31
Speaker
All right, Em. The age old question. Are you a book nerd or a movie buff? I think that I'm a book nerd. I really enjoyed the book.
00:44:43
Speaker
I need to like read it a third time, I think. Just to really fully digest it. So i'mnna I'm going to say the book. I really liked it. I liked the way that it was written.
00:44:55
Speaker
yeah How about you? I also am a book nerd. I liked the movie, don't get me wrong. um And it was...
00:45:07
Speaker
I really like the soundtrack of the movie. We didn't really talk about that, but maybe I'm and maybe i'm a movie buff, actually. i can't be both, can I?
00:45:19
Speaker
i mean, I have in the past. Can I? Or I've abstained. Split my... Yeah, you can't abstain. That's against the rules. I've done it once and I'll do it again. you can be both.
00:45:31
Speaker
It's fine. Fine, I'm gonna be both, because I really like the the book and I've read it before and I don't really reread things, but I was like, we should read this because I wanted to reread it.
00:45:43
Speaker
um And also I've been wanting to watch the movie since it came out, but had not. So I'm both, I'm book nerd and movie buff. Look at you go.
00:45:55
Speaker
Look at me. Next month is July and we've decided to take a little break. For August, we picked something a little lighter, a modern friends-to-lovers romance. Make sure to join us August 20th when we discuss The People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry.
00:46:14
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast. Watch for new episodes out the third Thursday each month. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
00:46:25
Speaker
Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Book Club, the movie. You can also find us on Patreon, Facebook, or on our website, bookclubthemovie.com. This podcast was created and produced by Jen Moyer and M. Lord.
00:46:39
Speaker
Our music and mixing is by Jason Lord of Studio Topaz. Voice acted by Ethan Gallardo. And we just want to give a big thank you to our friends and family for your love and support.
00:46:51
Speaker
And thank you, dear listener, for joining our book club. See you next time, nerds. And buffs. Bye.
00:47:03
Speaker
We know that we're we're viewing the world through Irene, through Irene's eyes, but- I can hear the dogs ripping something up. Hold on.
00:47:17
Speaker
I'm going to have to remember what I was trying to say now. Fuck.
00:47:25
Speaker
Here's a little nugget for Emily. little Little sound nugget when she returns. Because she cannot hear me. That was, in fact, Jason opening a bag of chips.
00:47:37
Speaker
And not the dogs. Fucking dogs. I've been burned too many times before. Halt. um So, i don't remember what I was saying.