Tristan and Isolde Movie

The director and producers of the film "Tristan and Isolde" took many liberties in changing the plot and story line of the original work. One such change was in the fact that there was no magic/love potion in the film, whereas Beroul's story had a love potion.

While this is a deviation from the original story, I do not think that it drastically changed the way the characters were viewed or how the story progressed. In the original the love potion served as a scapegoat for the couples illicit love. In the movie there is another scapegoat proposed. In this case the lovers meet and fall in love before Isolde is married to Mark. Just like the potion made the reader sympathize with the couple in the written work, the fact that they were in love pre-Mark creates a feeling of pathos for their situation.

Even though the two methods of justifying the relationship between Tristan and Isolde are similar, there is one prime difference. In the book, the reader's sympathy can only extend until the point that the love potion wears off. After that it becomes apparent that their love supersedes the potion and that the potion might not have been as powerful as it was once suspected. The movie, however, allows the viewer to side with Tristan and Isolde until the end, seeing as their love began innocently enough and the subsequent events were largely out of their control.