Are you intrigued by movies claiming to be based on a true story? Note that I said claiming to be. It’s the rare Hollywood drama inspired by actual events that doesn’t take liberties in the interest of spicing up the narrative. That may involve inventing characters, adding conflict or tweaking details to make the whole thing more relatable to a broad audience. In the case of The Vow, it was all of the above … and then some.
Kim and Krickitt Carpenter, the couple whose experience inspired last weekend’s box-office champ, met over the phone and shared a long-distance relationship that lasted about a year before they tied the knot. It was, in Kim’s words, “a real storybook wedding.” But barely ten weeks into their marriage, a high-speed collision with a semi truck left both critically injured. Krickitt wound up in a coma with severe brain damage. When she awoke three weeks later, she’d suffered significant memory loss and had no recollection of ever being married. Kim was a stranger to her. Nevertheless, the Carpenters’ supportive family and strong Christian faith held them together while they patiently rediscovered one another as husband and wife. Eighteen years later, Krickitt still hasn’t regained about two years’ worth of lost memories, but she’s been busy making new ones.
How do I know all of that? From reading the couple’s book, also titled The Vow, and interviewing Kim and Krickitt for The Official Plugged In Podcast. Of course, had I simply seen the movie, I would have assumed that this cute couple (renamed Leo and Paige) met at the DMV, shared a drink and cohabited before a quickie marriage at the Art Institute of Chicago. According to Hollywood, their car was rear-ended at a stop sign while they were engaged in foreplay. He suffered only minor cuts and bruises. Furthermore, there’s not a single reference to faith or prayer anywhere in the film, and Leo receives no help at all from his estranged in-laws. Indeed, his wife’s parents are depicted as manipulative socialites with a dark family secret who aggressively undermine his attempts to reconnect with their confused daughter.
“Krickitt’s parents are very devout in their faith. They’ve been married over 50 years,” Kim told me, “and there’s never been any sign of infidelity. For them to characterize her parents like that was really appalling to me, but that was something we really didn’t have control over.”
Much later in the film, the father-in-law (played by Sam Neill) strongly encourages Leo to do the proper, loving thing and file for divorce. The notion of unselfishly freeing a spouse from a commitment she can’t recall making may be sweet and noble, but it downplays the significance of the marriage covenant. But more than that, it also didn’t happen. Needless to say, Kim lost that on-set battle with the director. Apparently, a man and a woman living out the challenges of their “til death do us part” promise isn’t as entertaining as watching a fictitious old flame re-emerge to muddy the poor wife’s emotional waters even further.
So how do the Carpenters feel about having their names attached to what is, essentially, a fictional story? I sensed in them more satisfaction than disappointment, albeit bathed in resignation.
“I think they really represented us very well,” Krickitt said. “It is a great movie. It is a Hollywood movie, and we can’t expect Hollywood to act like heaven. It’s great. It appeals to the world. And through that, we hope people are led to the book and they see an even deeper, more amazing story, and they get a taste of our faith and how we were able to actually survive what we went through.”
I hope Krickitt is right, that many will read the book as I did. The Vow is definitely worth your time. I only wish more of the book had made it to the screen.
With that in mind, do filmmakers have a moral obligation to make sure adaptations of actual events stick closely to the real-life script? Does it matter, so long as the movie delivers? What if it was your story? And if you know that a flick plays fast and loose with the facts, would that in any way discourage you from plunking down ten bucks to see it?
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