![]() At the outset, they, like most old people, rendered infirm and vulnerable by the passage of time, appear compassionate and polite. Whenever Addie explains this new phase of life to a friend, the usual suspicions arise, and she quickly retreats to a hasty, “No, it’s not what it’s about.” As Addie and Louis bond, and get to know each other, we start knowing them, too. Our Souls at Night is about that something – that something that cannot be defined, named, or explained that something that exists because it feels right and comforting, that seeks to free itself from social mores and judgement. Besides, if this isn’t about sex – or, for that matter, romance – then it has to be about something. But talk about what? Their current lives are mostly listless and unremarkable. With the new change in their lives, though, lying next to each other, they’ve to talk. But till now, they have only known of each other, not known each other. Louis and Addie have lived in the same neighbourhood for decades. ![]() Our Souls at Night, in comparison, is relatively straightforward, and Batra approaches it with quiet sure-footed steps. It was a particularly tricky book to adapt, and Batra did a commendable job, staying faithful to the material not in structure, but in spirit. His last film, The Sense of an Ending, found its source in a dense Julian Barnes novel, ruminating on memory and loss, storytelling and self-deception, gliding through different times and points of view. Batra is no stranger to slippery bylanes of adaptation. Setting the tone with this small scene, Batra beautifully captures the mood of Haruf’s novel, the essence of its protagonists and the pulse of Holt, where the days are lonely, and the nights lonelier. He accepts the offer with slight hesitation. I lost interest in that a long time ago.” “Would you be interested in coming to my house sometime to sleep with me?” It’s a kind of marriage-like question, actually, but umm… I’m getting cold feet.” “I want to suggest something to you”, she says, with a soft smile on her lips. Like Haruf’s novel, Batra’s Our Souls at Night begins with an old widow, Addie Moore (Fonda), visiting an old widower, Louis Waters (Redford), with an unusual request. So it’s not surprising that Ritesh Batra, who examined love and loneliness in his first two productions, The Lunchbox and The Sense of an Ending, turned to Haruf’s last for his latest, a Netflix original starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Held together by simple spare prose, where dialogues eschew quotation marks, Our Souls at Night melts your heart slowly and methodically, like a cube of ice subjected to a low flame. If novels are an invitation to an unfamiliar world, then reading Haruf feels like walking on red carpet. Haruf’s oeuvre spans six critically acclaimed novels, and his last in particular, Our Souls at Night, is a beguiling beauty. If an Indian small-town is an eager 20-something – restless, anxious and intense – then an American small-town is a weary septuagenarian – wise, composed and lonely.Īmerican novelist Kent Haruf set his books in such a place, a small fictional town, Holt in Colorado, inspired by the city of Yuma, in the same state, with a population of less than 4,000. ![]() Absolute serenity produces its own malaise. Loneliness, in such a town, is not a consequence, but an eventuality it rests on your shoulders and refuses to leave. On most afternoons, the town hums with a slow listlessness, and, during long clear nights, you can almost hear the stars twinkle. The streets long for the company of pedestrians the supermarket aisles are deserted the buses always have an empty seat. Small-town US moves at its own pace – if it moves at any pace at all.
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