The film, not the book. The film is stunning, disturbing, and moving, marred in a few places by crowd scenes that lacked believability. In general I was much happier with the whole film once I realised (near the end) that it’s a fairy tale, not a work of serious fiction – would be curious to know if the same is true of the novel. As a traditional fairy-tale, i.e visceral, filled with convenience and bloody, you couldn’t ask for much more.
Other comments – Dustin Hoffman is excellent, Karoline Herfuth is stunning in a pre-Raphelite kind of way, and before watching a film on a laptop on an aeroplane, check the content first, or hope the people sitting next to you are engrossed in the in-flight movie (oh my).
