The New Lord of the Flies Is Brutally Faithful to the Original Novel: The Review

It had been a long time since the BBC presented its audience with an ambitious project like Lord of the Flies, a classic of literature (for young people and adults alike) that has been adapted into film several times and now lands on the small screen. It's a strong blow that the English public broadcaster delivers at a time of significant reputational and economic crisis, not to mention political pressures and internal reorganizations. From what could be gathered at the Berlin Film Festival, where the first two of the four episodes that make up the miniseries were premiered, it's a gamble won, unlike anything seen in television for the BBC in a long time.

Lord of the Flies is an ambitious series in its means and production choices

What is most impressive about this adaptation is first and foremost the production scale: at a time of difficulty, betting on a much-loved classic never before adapted for the small screen might seem like playing it safe, were it not for the fact that the production genuinely believed in the project, approaching it with a budget and a preparation that smacks of old, expensive TV from another era.

Although the widespread use of wide-angle and anamorphic lenses doesn't always do justice to the wild beauty of the setting, this Lord of the Flies was largely filmed in the Langkawi Archipelago, Malaysia, with a group of very young boys chosen through an extensive casting process. The chances of them becoming familiar faces and names within a few years are quite high. Just consider that the very young Lox Pratt landed two antagonist roles for the annals here and in the new Harry Potter series where he will be the new Draco Malfoy, going through countless castings, to get an idea of his acting quality and that of his counterpart David McKenna as Piggy.

The prominent names recur throughout the production: for example, just a few minutes of viewing are enough to understand that the soundtrack operates on a very high level, far from being relegated to the background, as it is not content with the presence of an industry star like Cristóbal Tapia de Veer (the composer of the iconic music for The White Lotus) but also features Oscar winner Hans Zimmer (Dune, Inception, The Lion King) and Kara Talve for the main theme and additional music.

Luck also played a part: between the production and release of the series, showrunner Jack Thorne also became a star, or at least a reference name when it comes to problematic teenagers on TV. The BBC can therefore leverage the momentum of Adolescence, the Netflix series that consecrated him, to make the viewing of a story in which “human beings produce evil as bees produce honey,” as the novel's author and Nobel laureate William Golding used to say, even more appealing.

One of the key points of this adaptation is indeed to maintain the spirit of the original novel, which is adapted quite faithfully to its writer's cosmic pessimism. Golding, in fact, imagines a plane crash between the two world wars, of which the only survivors are a group of very young British boys. Expressions of the most high-ranking and posh English society, the boys (divided between a handful of pre-teens and a small group of younger children) immediately try to organize their survival in that “civic” and regulated way that society and adults have taught them. The brutal beauty of the story lies precisely in how it shows how certain foundations based on power dynamics and oppression are already rooted in very young participants in social life who, if isolated and without adult guidance, very quickly reveal how much human beings carry with them atavistic fears, paranoia, and a marked propensity for oppression and violence that for Golding are inherent in their very nature.

Even After Adolescence, Jack Thorne Continues to Experiment

Set in the same years as the novel, whose development it translates quite faithfully, Lord of the Flies sees its creator Jack Thorne once again choose to experiment in directorial terms. Although beautiful, the island where the children land never appears as such, because between hyper-saturated photography and direction that constantly distorts the contours of the frame, the continuous impression is one of obsessive and paranoid voyeurism.

Thorne deftly avoids the trap of over-explaining too soon: it's not a particularly dialogue-heavy series, quite the opposite. Lord of the Flies is capable, when necessary, of silently following its protagonists deep into the forest, letting them gradually reveal what troubles them. For example, there are at least three scenes in the first two episodes (each dedicated to one of the boys) where we follow the antagonist Jack from behind. The light reflecting on his increasingly dirty back, the movement of his shoulder blades as he silently advances into the dense forest in search of a wild boar to hunt, his curling up when he feels he has failed: it's a series that doesn't underestimate the physicality of the performers, given that the main opposition sees two radically different minds and bodies, and perhaps for this reason, instinctively hostile to each other.

Piggy (David McKenna) is chubby and thus nicknamed, but he is shrewd, wise, even pedantic in his judiciousness. He shares cunning and manipulative abilities with Jack, who is his exact opposite: thin, lanky, athletic, and cruel. The series doesn't even make the mistake of reducing everything to a confrontation between the two, giving space to the other boys, who are a mix of their characteristics, not softening even when the precarious “civil” balance shatters and the group begins to regress towards brutal, violent tribal logics, not alien to superstitions and paranoia.

For the success of the series, it will be crucial that these premises are maintained in the second part, where it will be interesting to understand whether Jack Thorne fully shares Golding's pessimistic vision or, having four hours of runtime available to further explore the psychologies of the young characters, will arrive at different conclusions. What has been seen of the first two episodes is enough, however, to say that it is already one of the most ambitious releases of the year, and absolutely worth checking out.