When James Hilton’s 1941 novel “Random Harvest” came to the big screen, just one year later, it was not the same. “Random Harvest,” the novel, concludes with a revelation that two characters — one the protagonist knew before he lost his memory, another he met only afterwards — had been the same person all along.
The shocking twist was possible in prose, where the audience couldn’t see the person’s face and could share, in an oblique way, the hero’s obliviousness. But when “Random Harvest” became a movie, starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, there was no hiding it. The whole film had to be dramatically restructured around the audience seeing and knowing what the protagonist doesn’t. It was different, but it still mostly worked. Mostly.
Suzie Miller’s 2019 one-woman play “Prima Facie” also makes a complicated transition to the silver screen. There aren’t any last-minute revelations to ruin, but the medium of live theater and the specific, powerful choice to frame the story from the protagonist’s perspective, with no other context, amplified the theatrical production’s vital message about believing victims of sexual assault even when there’s no other evidence. Now it’s on the big screen, where the immediacy and dynamism and fragility of its purely subjective framework has been altered, because as soon as other actors enter the scene, the story plays more like objective truth. “Prima Facie” may still be told from the protagonist’s perspective but now there are witnesses — you, me and everyone else in the audience.
Cynthia Erivo plays Tessa, a brilliant barrister and a rising star. She believes in the law. She believes even when the law protects terrible people, because the accused deserve the best defense possible. Tessa spends a lot of her time defending men accused of sexual assault, making vulnerable women sound confused and unreliable on the stand, as though any inconsistent detail while describing a violent, traumatic event is proof that a crime never happened, or at least that it was all just a misunderstanding. And she defends that way because that’s the law.
Tessa views trials as high-pressure, high stakes games, and herself as a winner. After all, barristers don’t say they lost a case, they say they “came in second.” She’s in a field where she’s not just respected but impressive, with a lightning-fast mind and nerves of steel. She’s short-listed for a major award, she’s just been offered a lucrative job with an important firm and she’s sleeping with another promising young barrister, Julian (Daniel Ings, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”).
Susanna White (“Andor”) directs “Prima Facie.” She pulls slightly back from the play’s fast-paced presentation, giving the story and characters — plural, now — space to breathe. “Prima Facie,” the film, invites an audience into Tessa’s actual world, not just her perspective. And although it’s presented through crisp imagery and skillful performances, this decaffeinated pacing has the effect of telegraphing the plot, which makes White’s film come across, at least a little, like a cautionary tale about Tessa’s hubris.
A night of drinking and, at first, consensual sex descends into horror. Julian forces himself on Tessa, and she finds herself suddenly within the same system whose biases she herself has exploited. She makes the same choices that have ruined other women’s chances of being taken seriously in court, like showering evidence away afterwards. It is easy to judge people going through a crisis from a distance. Tessa’s experience is brutal and life-altering and it feels that way, but now we’re hyperaware of the story’s construction and the point it builds to. We’re not swept up in a conversation with a person who is, perhaps, best described as a force of nature. We’re watching her story unfold from the outside from the calculating perspective of a filmmaker making tricky decisions about the material.
“Prima Facie” is fascinating as a case study about those difficult, complex adaptation choices. The film technically tells the same story as the play but dramatically alters the way it’s processed. White’s film is no less devastating for its changes, but they do simplify some of the material’s complexities. The play treats the audience like a jury; the film treats us like a witness. The message that it’s important to believe women takes on a different dimension when we actually share Tessa’s experiences, and the film’s conclusion — which has a welcome, albeit blunt new element of hope — lands differently. Not necessarily worse, but very, very differently.
Jodie Comer won awards for her performance in “Prima Facie” on the West End and Broadway. Now Cynthia Erivo brings an extremely different energy to Tessa. Her version comports herself with reserved dignity amongst her peers, playing the game inside and outside the courtroom. Miller’s play incorporated class into the narrative: Tessa came from a working class family in a poor neighborhood, and hides this fact from her colleagues, most of whom arrived in the same place through privilege, not only skill. The film adds the context of race to this conversation; although Miller’s screenplay doesn’t dig deeply into this new part of the narrative, Erivo’s layered performance and powerful supporting turns by Noma Dumezweni and Toheeb Jimo, playing her mother and brother, effectively convey these complexities.
It’s a dignified production. White directs “Prima Facie” with a sharp focus on the story’s themes, carefully manipulating the cold visual palette to create converse images of security and instability, Tessa’s life before and her life after. The performances are admirable and strum meaningful chords. That the film doesn’t have the same impact as the play was a given, and probably unavoidable. Comparing it to the play is also unavoidable, and possibly not wholly fair, but it’s hard to ignore that “Prima Facie” in its original form is an emotional lightning strike and this film is more like thunder.
