One of the best New Zealand novels of the past 20 years – almost certainly the smartest, and most exactingly crafted – has just had its movie adaptation premiered at the Tribeca Film festival in New York to good reviews. by Wellington writer Carl Shuker is directed by Christine Jeffs, and stars Hollywood actress (and director of ) Elizabeth Banks as a surgeon who makes a fatal mistake on the operating table. The 2019 novel is a work of art and so, too, going by reviews this weekend, is the film version.
: “It digs into thorny questions about human error and responsibility...
Sensitively observed, measured, and intelligent.” : “A slow-burning story about a tragic incident.” I spoke with the author on Sunday.
He hasn’t seen the final cut but watched an early edit of the film’s opening scene, on an operating table, in the studio at Jeffs’ home in Warkworth. “Mind-blowing,” said Shuker. In part, it was the accuracy of the filming of the surgical procedure; he described the use of hundreds of mannequins on set, with open veins and organs, that actors cut into.
Shuker works in health care (and formerly edited at the ), and took great pains to make sure the surgical procedures in his novel. He was familiar with doctors sitting around discussing fictional treatments of their work. “They are .
My God. Just so brutal, when a book or a film gets it wrong. I knew I had to get their approval.
” Shuker was also amazed at the way Jeffs made it look. “She didn’t u.