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Movie Analysis : Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been

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To change a well-known short story into a movie is a challenging move by many directors. Whether it’s Tell-Tale Heart (1941), Harrison Bergeron (1995), or Flowers for Algernon (2000), most readers agree that the story version is more preferable than the cinematic adaptation. Film directors often change or take out essential parts of a story during the screenplay’s production. In the film Smooth Talk (1985), Joyce Chopra, the movie’s director, took the risk in portraying Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been.” In her film reproduction of the story, Chopra pitches a few scenes with the main character, Connie, about her lifestyle. The short story only summarizes Connie’s personality in a few written sentences. However, these changes are not the most exclusive differences in the movie. Even though the characters of Connie and Arnold Friend remains unchanged throughout the story and film, the biggest contrast is Chopra’s refinement of the ending and the shift in the mother’s perspective of Connie as her daughter.

Oates’s short story is enigmatic, and it advocates a bitter end. Chopra replaced the ending to make it seem that Connie has a chance for a possible future. In the film’s closure, Connie makes peace with her family instead of walking out of the house to go along with Arnold Friend. Granting she and her mother have regular fights in the story and movie, they emerge as being pleasant to one another in the movie’s closure.

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