Dan Rush’s Film Adaptation of “Why Don’t You Dance?” by Raymond Carver
Raymond Carver is greatly known for his minimalist style when it comes to his works of literature. Due to the fact that Carver wrote this way, the director and screenwriter of Everything Must Go, Dan Rush, had no choice to but to expand on this story by adding more elements to the characters, theme, and plot of Carver’s original work. In the film adaptation of the short story, “Why Don’t You Dance?” by Raymond Carver, Rush, while veering away from the original storyline and shedding a new light on the prominent theme of alcoholism, manages to successfully show just how this disease has the capability of ruining someone’s entire life.
There are a few ways Carver’s short story differs from Rush’s film adaptation. The first way is in how the main male character is portrayed and how much is revealed about the situation at hand. In “Why Don’t You Dance?”, while it is obvious the main male character struggles with alcoholism, that is all that is really divulged about him, along with the fact that his wife, for an unknown reason, has left him. In Everything Must Go, Rush turns the issue of alcoholism into the major focal point of the film and builds on it, showing that it is in fact what has ruined the character’s marriage. As far as the background of the character is concerned, Carver does not reveal much about the main character at all, except for the fact that he is an alcoholic who does not know how to deal with the cards he has been dealt. Rush, in keeping with part of Carver’s original work, still portrays Nick, the main character in the film, as an alcoholic who also does not know how to deal with the situation he is in. However, as more is revealed...
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...ing Must Go is a somewhat loose interpretation of “Why Don’t You Dance?”, Rush still manages to capture and elaborate greatly on the theme of alcoholism by showing how, while this disease tears people apart, it also brings people together. The latter is shown when Nick makes new friends who, in the end, seem to double as his new family. While each main character in the film has a different background, they are all brought together by the feelings they have in common, particularly the feelings of loneliness and wanting to help Nick through the rough patch in his life and his ongoing battle with alcoholism, just like a real family would want to help one of their very own family members.
Works Cited
Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories. New York:
Vintage Books, 1989. Print.
Everything Must Go. Dir. Dan Rush. Lionsgate, 2011. Film.
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