See it if you dare... (The film of the book)

Name: chris105

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Product:	The film of the book
Date:	16/04/01 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's a faster way of getting through the story...

Disadvantages: ...though not through the feel - you'll have to read the book for that!

Don't even get me started. Please! Give me a book any day. Or give me a film any day. But don't give me a film which is masquerading as an adaptation of a book. Ok?

And that's one way of looking at it.

The other is:

Films are being made anyhow. [It's not exactly a struggling industry, now is it?] Good ideas, like good politicians, are as rare as... good ideas and good politicians. Hare-brained excuses for a script are readily and consistently bandied about Hollywood (or so it seems from the results - not that I've ever been there myself), resulting in 120-minute extravaganzas featuring the latest technological equipment, the newest couture collection strapped around the hottest actresses, the pop idol of the week crooning the coolest soundtrack - in short, the latest and hottest of everything except a decent storyline.

So, given a choice between the above and a storyline taken from a good book.... well, do you really blame the producers? Disparage Shakespeare we may till we're blue in the face, but there aren't too many clones of the bard running around LA!

Of course, what really gets to us book-lovers is the sacrilege of using a lofty thing as is a book and demoting it to a lurid script. But then that's our elitist problem, isn't it? [*Note to members of the category:: cringing and affrontery at this point please*]

For the rest of the population, the only point worth making is that they're getting a good deal in the form of a half-decent storyline backing up what may be a good or a less good film.

Because that, mesdames et monsieurs, is another issue altogether. Whether a film will turn out ok, drab or wonderful depends on a host of other factors mostly unrelated to the story (director, cast, budget, creativity, etc). A film having a great story but developed insensitively, with sloppy acting and dripping with crass commercialism - will be a horrid film, irrespec
tive of whether the aforementioned great story is the juice of the scriptwriters' genius or the talent of a studio executive's "precis"-session with a wordprocessor and a bestseller. And conversely, so-so books have been made into films that shine, if not with a brilliant plot, with artistic gusto on the visual side of things.

But here we're talking about the film of the book, thus about scripts. So let's set aside the other factors in the film equation, and settle down to the story itself. So the story's been taken from a book, right? Having ransacked all other forms of entertainment, it was only to be expected that Hollywood would ransack the library too. Not that this is a new phenomenon. Gone With the Wind isn't exactly nineties stuff. The quality has, ahime, changed - but again that's not really related to the quality of the books ransacked but rather to declining standards of filmmaking and to the triumph of quantity over quality.

Let's just say that the story will reach an infinitely vaster audience through its celluloid incarnation than through its original printed book form. It's unfair, I know. But then, put in another way, the filmgoers are getting the sour end of the deal, aren't they?, since they're watching a second-hand version, and missing out on the magic of the original.

Yes, the magic of the original - now THAT is a priority, perhaps. In my opinion, what we should be more concerned about isn't that films are inferior in quality to their book original (we've read the book anyway, so that's not our problem!), but rather that the magic of reading a story as it unfolds on paper and in our minds is an incomparable experience. Reading has survived for millennia - we can't say that for films yet. Give me an audience feedback for "American Pie" in the year 4001, then I'll reconsider. A story within a (good) book is infinite in scope: each reader
will picture his/her own background, characters and mood. Depending on the skill of the writer, the reader will be guided in this imagination exercise, however the last word is always the reader's. I have a very clear impression in my mind of Aurelio Zen, which may or may not be similar to author Dibdin's - but I'd recognise Zen immediately out of a crowd. Yet my impression will differ from Malu's (I hope you don't mind me singling you out - but you're a Dibdin fan too, so that's fair game!), as it will differ from any other reader's. My Zen is precisely that: MY Zen.

I've given up trying to convince friends that reading a book instead of imbibing its film transposition is merely a second-hand emotion (with apologies to Tina Turner for that plagiarism!). I prefer at this point to feel superior (!), knowing that these friends will never savour the magic of curling up with the book and visualising the story as it unfolds in their mind's eye. I'm reading The Blind Assassin at the moment - and believe you me I am in Port Ticonderoga, I could draw a streetmap for you. But if the film version is ever made... (actually the book IS a good candidate for celluloid treatment, so beware)

Now of course all this is sounding very smug and superior and elitist - and frankly, I couldn't be bothered. BUT (yes, there had to be a but) a film does have its charm. It has an immediateness that books can never have. One single shot can evoke a mood that could take the author six pages of text to achieve. But this presupposes, if not necessarily faithfulness to the text, faithfulness to the feeling behind a story. And this is where most film transpositions unfortunately fail. Many directors are either downright snobbish towards the written text, attempting to create their own masterpiece completely detached from the original, or else mechanically transfer the written text to the screen without allowing for those magical brush
strokes of characterisation and mood to emerge.

Has anyone (not) seen the film "Chocolat"? Because that contradicts most of the assertions made above - proving once again that an exception proves a rule. Joanne Harris' book is a masterpiece of culinary writing - never has a book so stimulated my taste buds. [Plug: read my op on the book to find out more... (you're shameless, Chris!)] The book made the story and characters seem so surreal yet so real. So I was, to put it mildly, apprehensive when the film was released. But I was to be pleasantly surprised, as they say in these cases. The film was more or less faithful to the book in terms of storyline (the few changes made had clear commercial reasons behind them). In terms of mood and general atmosphere, however, it took the biscuit. Vianne, Anouk, Armande, the town itself, the river-people - they were exactly as I'd pictured them. The direction, photography, lighting, acting, was so faithful to the original it could have been done single-handedly by the author herself. Now I never thought I'd say the following sentence in my life, but here goes: I think the film actually enhances enjoyment of the book. (ooh, I said that! - it wasn't that difficult to say after all.)

But then again, one sheep doesn't make a farm. So all of the above holds, except for Chocolat.

The film of the book. Don't we all love to hate that phrase? ;-)

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