The Movie vs. Book Debate of Death
John’s presentation concerning film interpretations of books left me a little peeved. I realized I failed to articulate my arguments clearly, so here they are:
I completely understand the necessity of changing dialogue, modifying plots, emphasizing special effects, and so on. A movie can never reproduce a book in its entirety; the very idea is laughable. But, I cannot forgive movies that blatantly ignore honest characterization. Michael Gambon’s Albus Dumbledore is a perfect example of this unbearable insult to readers of J.K. Rowling’s work. Look at what Sir Gambon (yes, he is a knight) had to say on his portrayal of the much beloved Dumbledore:
“I don’t have to play anyone really. I just stick on a beard and play me, so it’s no great feat. I never ease into a role – every part I play is just a variant of my own personality. I’m not really a character actor at all…”
Clearly. And the fact that this man had the balls to admit that he did not even pick up a Harry Potter novel before failing so spectacularly on screen is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. This man’s very paycheck is the product of millions of fans standing outside in freezing weather on midnight to purchase a new Potter book. The fact remains: this actor would not be getting paid if no one read J.K. Rowling’s books. The least he can do is take ten minutes to read Dumbledore’s Wikipedia entry. But Gambon is content to take a dump over J.K. Rowling’s work and the millions of devoted readers who expect a decent performance. You might say: “But Andy, that’s his interpretation of the character, that’s not nice to attack him for it, LOL.” I can attack him for it because his interpretation is blatantly wrong. No matter how you spin it, some interpretations are clearly more wrong than others, because Dumbledore would rather stab himself in the face than shove Harry Potter up against a wall and threaten him with violence. If you need to use violence to make a scene intense and emote Dumbledore’s concern and disappointment, you’re a horrible actor and have no business landing roles, or you’re a horrible director and have “the emotional range of a teaspoon.”
The Lord of the Rings deviated quite a bit from the trilogy’s plot, as briefly discussed in class. However, did you see Liv Tyler act like a nymphomaniac strung out on drugs? Or Aragorn complaining about a broken nail during a battle scene? Do those images seem jarring, disturbing, or quite frankly disgusting? Now imagine how it must feel for me and a whole host of other people to see a much revered character butchered so shamelessly by an actor who makes no pretense of actually trying? Worse still, Gambon took over for the deceased Richard Harris and completely deviated from Harris’ performance. I can’t imagine a worse insult to Harris’ memory, who portrayed Dumbledore beautifully as one of his last acting roles prior to his death. I mean, did he even watch Harris’ performance?
A few people mentioned that movie directors are not interested in replicating books but rather making them their own–I understand that artistic, creative drive. However, encouraging lazy actors to butcher character portrayals merely to produce “original art” makes me want to puke. As stated above, I have no problems with editing certain aspects of the book to make it more movie friendly, but CLEARLY the Harry Potter movie franchise is doing something wrong, given the score of crappy reviews and piecemeal, shoddy plots apparently strung together by fourth graders who can barely string together misshapen macaroni necklaces.
Case in point: the best reviews generated by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix film were directed toward the performances of Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch), and Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter)–all of whom stuck to the original book portrayals perfectly. Helena Bonham Carter was labeled as a “shining but underused talent” by the Times, and Imelda received similar praise as “exquisitely dislikeable.” Quick, test your common sense IQ: if the best reviews were directed at the three actresses who stuck to the book and researched their characters, and the worst reviews were directed at crazy, loopy plots that deviated from the book, what do you think the script writers need to do for future movies to generate the best reviews? If you answered: why, adhere more closely to the plot that made J.K. Rowling a millionaire, of course! Then congratulations, your common sense IQ is somewhere between 40 and 200.
Hermione Granger, portrayed by Emma Watson, is a rather plain looking girl whose lovable personality and brainpower endear her to her fellow students. The directors feel a plain girl would not sell nearly as well as a very attractive buxom teenager. But honestly, does Emma Watson’s chest make or break ticket sales? Her beauty cheapens the character to a dull “Mary Sue:” she’s pretty, talented, beloved, smart, etc. Where the hell are her flaws? In order to make Hermione a worthwhile on screen heroine, the directors gussy her up needlessly. From a feminist standpoint, it’s disgusting.
I’m detracting a bit from the actual debate, so let me summarize: change plots to make the book more adaptable to the screen–but mess with the characters and hear the wrath of angry fans through college freshmen English blogs. Bleargh I’m going to do something less painful, like douse myself in liquid hot magma.
Jamie Goldberg wrote:
I think directors often try to change plots and characters in order to get better reviews and create what they think is a better movie. However, as Andy said, the best reviews usually are about well-researched characters that try to stay true to the book. (If your making a movie based after a book, the original author obviously did somethign right.)
I think the Harry Potter movies are a poor attempt at deviating from the book in order to create a more hollywood style movie. On the other hand, Peter Jackson the Lord of the Rings director managed to stay true to the book while still creating an entertaining and interesting movie that could appeal to both movie fans and book fans. In creating the LOTR movie, the crew spent absurd amounts of time creating complex sets that followed every detail from the descriptions in the book. Things on the sets that one wouldn’t even notice when watching the movie, still were created with immense detail. Everything from the costumes to the pronounication of Elvish words were exacted in order to match what Tolkien had intended. Although there were slight plot changes and events that from the book that didn’t appear in the movie, the characters stayed true to the book and the scenes weren’t exaggerated for the sake of a good hollywood scene.
Directors need to learn to stay true to the books they are recreating while still displaying a good movie. Of course, things need to be cut from the book, but there is a right and wrong way to do this.
Posted 13 Nov 2007 at 2:27 am ¶
Lindsay wrote:
It is difficult to make a movie exactly like the book because the actors/writers/directors have to convey characters thoughts and feelings through actions and spoken words. They can’t always have that narrator explaining what is going on. Actors etc. have to communicate the mood and tone of the scene themselves an often times the actions or words that they use don’t fit in with the plot. If a movie fails to live up to the book it can be partly attributed to the limited mechanisms that actors have to work with. I agree that it is best to try to stay true to the book but sometimes it’s just not possible.
A couple side notes:
The five hour Pride and Prejudice was still not accurate. Long movies aren’t always more accurate.
The Godfather is one movie that is often considered better than the book. I’m just saying it is possible to make a movie that’s better than the book.
Posted 13 Nov 2007 at 7:49 pm ¶
sean wrote:
I think Dan’s point about Children of Men would be welcome here: it’s not just a matter of changing or being “faithful.” The C/M movie of 2005 will of necessity be very different from the C/M book written in 1991. The difference: our relationship (as viewers, readers, consumers) to terror and globalization. And in making those changes, the movie completely changed a number of characters, Theo in particular. In the book, we are left with him morphing into the new Warden of England, with all appropriate menace. At the end of the movie, he is a dead Christ-like figure.
Posted 13 Nov 2007 at 11:23 pm ¶
campagnolo wrote:
I think there is another point here: A movie made simultaneously as a book is written, will of necessity be different from the text, because of the inherencies of different media.
The difference: They are disparate forms of communication. The most “honest and straight forward” interpretation of a book would be a a reading of its dialog by actors. With this most idiotic adaption of prose, the film would still convey an entirely different message, because film is primarily a visual medium. On top of this it would be unpleasantly long, as well as unsatisfying, because most literature details internal action more then it does speech.
So our hypothetical film is a real piece of shit that is still radically different then the original because film is a visual discourse, and most of the information is conveyed by the picture. There is no direct translation of text into film,
Here is where I think I might lose a few readers: This hardly precludes the possibility of a film being genuinenly ‘honest’ to the text. It simply means that do so there has to be expansion, compression, reconceptualization and interpretation.
Name me a film that is more honest to its text than Apocalypse Now, regardless of the fact that Heart of Darkness was written 64 years before the Vietnam war. Scorcese’s realization of the thematic ideas of Conrad are stunning, but from the standpoint of plot the film is hardly honest.
Furthermore ‘honesty’ has nothing to do with how valuable, interesting, and applicable a film is to an original text.
I think the best adaptations become intertextual and often confrontational with there source matter. I think two good examples come from Kubrick. First Lolita. Nabokov himself wrote Kubrick the script for Lolita, excited over being to re-adapt his story to a new means communication. After he finished it Kubrick told him it was an incredible script, then threw it in the garbage, and made his own film with a new script, oppositional to the novel in the most its most basic axiomatic assumptions. Watching it after reading the book is an incredible exercise in challenging readings, interpretations, and understandings of both the film and the text. Second: 2001: a space odyssey. Kubrick wrote it with Arthur C. Clarke, and yet the film has about 15 minutes of total dialog. It is in visual conversation with the book, holds many of its tenets up, crushes others, creates its own and is the best re-conceptualization of a novel I have ever seen.
So we have a situation where whether or not a film can adhere to the principals of a book has nothing to do with how closely plots resemble each other, and its in relation to the book does not require the espousing of the same themes. It is imagination, evolution, and argument.
In fact, I contend that if a perfect copy of a book could be reproduced in film that it would be absolutely worthless, except as escapism. The constructions of continuous worlds without challenge have nothing to do with thinking. Discontinuity and Struggle (which can be ameliorated within a text:see 2001) is the history of complex and valuable art.
My take on Harry Potter in lieu of my opinions above: It is facile pulp to begin with, and a perfect copy of it in film would be an unchallenging affirmation of facile pulp, the realization of a continuous multi-media conglomeration. If i had kids (10 or 19) I would want them to be challenged, and while there is nothing wrong with occasional immersing fantasy, I have no interest in promoting it on the scale of the HP empire. I think the world of HP has been turned away from whatever value and merit it may have ever had, into the quintessential example of literature as escapist consumerism.
So, lets not mention HP again. There are much more interesting book-novel adaptations we could be talking about. Like, all of them. How about children of men, that seems pertinent for some reason.
Posted 14 Nov 2007 at 1:55 am ¶
campagnolo wrote:
Just realized I attributed Apocalypse Now to Scorcese instead of Coppola. Thats embarrassing, way to undermine myself.
Posted 14 Nov 2007 at 2:42 am ¶
Sparky wrote:
I think even more different than differences in the media, the difference occurs becuase reading and seeing what we read in our minds is a highly personal evet. This image is created by the experiences we have had, how we choose to interpret the text etc. A book written in the Cold War may have a power soviet enemy, but a movie created 30 years in the future will have to tweak that due to history. The Red Scare isn’t as near and dear to us as it is to the generations immediatly above us. This is on a more wider scale, but as the experince of reading a book and making a movie is different, as you reading the your way, and me reading the same book my way, I think it becomes impossible to really have the “perfect” movie which follows the book, after all this would mean everyone reads as the ideal reader does.
Posted 12 Dec 2007 at 11:55 am ¶