Based On The Novel : An Essay From Jeffrey Black
This is more like a statement as opposed to an article.
Movies that are based on novels do not neccesarily have to follow the book to the tee. In fact, they can be considerably far from the novel and still be wonderful films. The term "Based on the Novel",, means exactly what it says. It is based on the novel. I have not seen a credit at the beginning of a film that says"Taken From The Novel Word For Word". The reason is because 90% of all film adaptations have to be altered in one way or the other to make an effective story for a movie. Period. Think about it. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was originally a book written by Ken Kesey. The book and the film are considerably different. Thats one reason Kesey did not watch the film until recently. Same with The Shining. The book is very different from the movie. Yet, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, in my opinion, is the greatest movie of all time. And as for The Shining, it too is a masterpiece.
In some cases the book can be followed almost by the page. The Green Mile did, virtually, and it is a great film. The moral of my debate is,look at films completely seperate from their literary source. That way you can fully appreciate the film as a seperate work of art. Otherwise, you could be depriving yourself of solid entertainment. In the immortal words of lbangs...Shallom y'all.
I think you're right - The Shining is an excellent example of a film that departed considerably from the novel and was still a wonderful film. However, in many cases the film misses the point. If you're going to make a film based on a novel, I think there should be some attempt to capture the spirit and the message of the literary source, don't you think? In that sense I think it's often useful to compare to the literary source - just so long as you're not just nitpicking the details.
Sorry, Buddy, but I absolutely disagree. The film is the film, and the book is the book. To try to judge either by the other is a grave disservice to an independent work of art. You can certainly point out where a change resulted in a worse piece, but to label a film as bad or flawed because it broke with its source is simply assuming an imprisoning context that the director often has claimed freedom from.
A fan of the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, could certainly see the chronological switcheroo pulled at the end of the filmed version unforgivable, but taken on its own terms, it works just fine. It is different, but not necessarily poor.
Now, if the novel is an excellent one, there would certainly be an advantage in attempting to capture whatever it was that knocked the book a notch above the norm, but only fans of the book would ever see this as mandatory.
Shakespeare, it should be remembered, often took older existing plays as sources, radically revamped them, and created masterpieces. I don't really hear anyone today faulting him for altering (often radically, in mood as well as plot and character) the original. We enjoy his plays as the independent works of art they are. Time has a funny way of sweeping such illegitimate criticism aside.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Someone recently said "creativity is just undetected plagarism". I suppose I agree that a film and a book can and should stand on its own merits. But I think Buddy makes a very valid point that any movie that is not true to its source material is the lesser for it. Whether that source material is a book, play or original screenplay it is the job of the director and others to get the spirit of that material condensed into a 2 to 3 hour movie. Sometimes this is a very difficult job that can be botched by both bad and good directors.; Like Kubrick with Lolita (though not without merit, Lolita has many flaws) and who ever directed say..Dune.
I think the point Lester brings up about Shakespeare is not really very valid on many books turned into Movies. I do like it though as an argument for sampling in the music industry.
Some novels that have great stories are made into films. Knowing that film is visual we interpret the film as we see it. Books are created visually in our heads through what we visualize. There is where a lot of the differences between books and film take place. I may read a book and get a completely different feeling from it than say Les, or you Jim #2.Films are made mostly (not always) to set up a similar response from its viewers. It's so hard to take a book literally in a film adaptation. No need to disregard one of the art forms and deprive ourselves of more entertainment.
My humble nature makes me uncomfortable with the implied title, "Jim #1". :-) Especially since jgandcag's cinematic knowledge exceeeds my own by a considerable margin, as near as I can tell.
Jim, a funny thing about knowledge of any kind. I am old enough to have amassed a lot of knowledge and not too old to have started forgetting it yet, but time is catching up...
Perhaps Mr Black who seems to love nicknames should call me Gill as that has been a nickname of mine for many years.
No offense, but how is my point not valid?
I do believe that most films based on excellent literature yet not true to their sources tend to be the lesser for it, but these deviations are flaws that can and should detected by a simple viewing of the film, without using the source as a recourse. The films are not weak because they deviated, they are weak because these deviations often weaken the story. There is a reason many of the classics are considered classics - because they are pretty darned good they way they are.
Shakespeare is no different, unless of course we are going to excuse him because he was a genius, in which case we are admitting that being untrue to a source is alright, as long as it results in excellent work.
To jump from high to low culture for another example, the James Bond movie truest to the novels is The Living Daylights (Timothy Dalton is nearly a carbon-copy of the Bond of the books), but I don't know anybody who claims this as the best Bond film. Most people claim Goldfinger, which has very little in common with Fleming's novels. Most people also prefer Sean Connery as Bond, even though he doesn't really line up with the extremely thin, cold-blooded, non-Scottish Bond of the novels. As long as the end result is good, the relation of the film to the source just shouldn't (and doesn't, really) matter.
Gee, and I'm not even a fan of Kubrick's Lolita...
As a brief aside and answer, David Lynch directed Dune, which you probably already know. Ah well.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I think you have a point in that they are two individual pieces of art, and need to be viewed as such. I do think that a film can deviate quite a bit from its literary source in surface details and still retain the heart of the book. Of course, this area is very sketchy and up for debate most of the time. I don't think that a film should aspire to representing a book exactly - what would be the point? But if a film IS going to be based on a novel, I think there should be a concerted effort to interpret and express the message of the book. A viewer should bear in mind, however, that translating one art form into another medium necessarily involves some changes, and not fault a film solely for that reason.
A think a reasonable example of what I mean is American Psycho. The director took some creative liberties with the plot, but captured several key aspects/themes of the novel beautifully. Not that I was a terribly big fan of either the film or the novel, but I thought that the one was an interesting interpretation of the other, and both benefit from comparison to each other. I find that sometimes even the differences can shed light on the work.
It would've been really difficult to bring American psycho closer to its literary source. I enjoyed the movie, not that much, but it was alright. The book is off the hook, but I dont weigh my opinion of the film with the book.
I thought American Psycho was a really good movie, not great, but very good. The book was decent, not excellent in my opinion. It had some very funny moments, but I just kept getting a feeling of repetition with the same descriptions (such as with clothes for example). This made the book get somewhat bogged down in unimportant facts. I did like some of its existential aspects but wished they would have been exploited more.
I'd just like to add a little something to this discussion. A film SHOULD stand on its own merits, but when it follows in the shadow of a great source it is difficult not to compare the following film with its source. If we've already read the source it's coming from, our objectivity will be lost because we will already have set a up a different sort of expectation for what that movie should be. We believe that the subsequent film should inspire similar feelings as those that we felt during the novel, and if not then many times we will regard the movie with disappointment and see it as a failure(although it may garner critical acclaim and what not). It's unfair for that movie to engender such high expecations if it comes from a great source, but that's what happens and there's not much we can do except be conscious of the situation. The film and the novel ARE independent achievements but I know that when I've read a book that later inspired a movie or seen a movie and then read the book, I've always developed certain expecations going into either one that in the end helped dicate whether I considered that particular work a success or a failure. Wrong? In a perfect world yeah, but in this imperfect world there is not much we can do to help it.
I've never had the problem seperating the two. I guess some can and some can't.
The basic problem here is one of the sacred rules of criticism. You have to let a work of art tell you how to read / view / hear it. Most embarrassing critical mistakes of the past happened because critics had too many rules as to what art should do and what the best way to achieve these goals are. Preconceived rules of this sort serve as blinders, restricting viewers from seeing the film for what it really is by focusing them on what they want the film to be.
Expecting an adaptation to be like the book it is from is simply another group of rules to force onto an art work - a very rigid set of restrictions, I might add, as it demands certain qualities not only from the way the art is made, but from such details as character traits, mood, and plot. It is certainly human to wish that the film version of our favorite book resembles the book, but it is hardly fair. We are trying to tell the film how to please us rather than meeting the film on its own terms, and quite frankly, this leads to terrible, terrible criticism.
If anyone is to blame, it is not the film itself, but the studios and other promoters who count on the connections to beloved books to sucker in fans of the novels regardless to the quality or nature of the film.
There were people who disliked Hitchcock's film, The 39 Steps, simply because it had little to do with the book of the same title (a common trait of Hitchcock's films, by the way). The only people who really lost out were the disgruntled fans of the book, since the film was a vivid preview of a great director at the height of his powers. Again, time has a way of sweeping such silly criticisms aside, and you hardly hear anybody complain about how unfaithful The 39 Steps was to Buchan's novel any more.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Les, I'm assuming you agree with my theories on this subject?
As far as I can tell, yes.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I was starting to feel all alone.
I agree with you 100%, a movie should never be compared to the book that it's based on and I have no problem seperating the two. A movie screenplay is 90-130 pages, there's no way to adapt a book of 300+ pages into that. A mini series is a much better way to adapt the book because, they have more time to develop the story and get more of the book into the adaptation. I never compare a movie with a book, because they're not the same and I don't expect them to be.