Warming Up to “The City of Ember”

The City of Ember (2003)

Sometime in 2004 I picked up Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember. It must have coincided with one of my collegiate re-readings of The Giver, because I remember the similarities standing out in a glaring way. I shelved The City of Ember with disgust, and forgot it existed. Until, that is, I saw the previews in 2008 for the film adaptation. I remember groaning aloud in the theater, explaining to friends that it was a terrible book.

I had an English professor in college with whom I took many, many classes. One thing she taught us was that reading is not a passive experience. You don’t read something, tuck it away, and that’s that. You enter the reading with your whole life’s accumulation of experiences. You interact with the book and it changes you. Your relationship with a book when you read it at 18 will be vastly different than when you read it at 40. Never has this been clearer to me than with this book.

Last week I ordered the film The City of Ember through Netflix. I settled in for an evening of masochistic glee, only to find that I was genuinely sorry I had to pause the movie to meet some friends. I thought about it while I was away, and I was glad to come home and finish it. Was the movie really so much better than the book? Had they changed it so much? I didn’t think they had, but I couldn’t remember. Six years is a while. So I pulled it out again (I can’t get rid of books) and sat down to read.

The film is visually incredible. Granted, there are great sections at the end that scream COMPUTER GENERATED in very loud, contrasty tones, but I mean before that. Perhaps it was the charm of post-apocalyptic self-contained societies, but the shabby clutter of electrical Ember was thrilling to look at and explore. The premise being that the town was stocked to survive for 200 years, but we’re about forty years past that, so everything is patched and re-purposed and very in right now.

Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway) and Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) in City of Ember (2008)

I found it was nice to have these visuals with me when I read the book again. I usually prefer my own imaginings, but I think in the case of The City of Ember, I had been at a loss six years ago to come up with a very compelling image of the city. The movie does it beautifully. I particularly liked the costume for Lina Mayfleet, and the exteriors of the city as she ran through delivering her messages.

I also noticed the similarities to The Giver less. Or maybe there just weren’t as many as I though. Man-made post-apocalyptic village? Okay, yeah, that’s not just Lois Lowry. I think she’s got the monopoly when it comes to YA lit though. Then there’s Assignment Day for all the twelve year-olds. This is when they’re given theit jobs within the community. The process is different, but the base concept is the same. Hey, maybe that’s what the end of the world calls for? You get to be a kid until you’re twelve, and then you better pull your weight. Maybe they’re tuned in to something the rest of us aren’t privy to. But aside from the job of Messenger (which DuPrau beat Lowry to, clearly), and keeping the villagers purposefully ignorant, I can’t find anything. And all that’s fairly coincidental, if not unavoidable. Rage dismissed. I was wrong.

City of Ember (2008)

The plots between the book and film stay in line almost perfectly until the end. In both cases we are given the background up front – Ember had been built underground to save the last of humanity. Their eventual escape, however, is made much more theatrical for the film. (Strangely enough.) Lots of automated and impressive machinery. I admit, I found it thrilling. After reading the escape in the novel again, I don’t think it would have been quite as climactic. Good choice.

The book does attempt to give us some background on the actual building of Ember. It started with a base of 200 people (100 infants, 100 elderly) who are assigned into family units (oh hey, more Giver) and the elders are supposed to say nothing of their lives before Ember. The new generations will grow up in ignorance until, 200 years later, the instructions for their departure are revealed. Except that doesn’t happen. The movie doesn’t even touch on this. I realize I’m getting awfully niticky about an allegory, but these are the things I want to know. How long would it take, really, to build an underground city that will sustain about 200 people, give or take, for 200 years? All the supplies they had to fill the storerooms with? Do you build extra homes so people can move out when they’re older? How do people repair the generator without understanding it? What government even funds this?

Okay, yes, now I’m getting too serious. But some of the questions are valid. I picked up the first sequel a few months ago at a used bookstore. I saw that there are others – another sequel, and a prequel. I really hope some of my issues are addressed. I think the plot would be too childish if some of the logistics weren’t made clear. If anything, I’d like to know why the town was made in the first place. I’ll just have to read it and find out.

Bottom line, I really, really enjoyed my second encounter with The City of Ember. I’d recommend it, both the book and the movie.

Podcast!

On an unrelated note, I read Going Bovine a few weeks back. I found that the entry I was writing about it was entirely too long, and I still had so much I wanted to say about it. So, the first episode of YAMCast is going to be about Libba Bray’s Going Bovine, the graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley Lost at Sea, and the teenage existential crisis. Hopefully I’ll be discussing it with a friend of mine, but I’ll totally talk to myself about it. If anyone out there is the weebiverse has some thoughts or opinions and wants to join us, hit me up and we’ll include you one way or another.