A reader writes:
Great novels do not tend to make great movies. The best literary adaptations on the big screen tend to be shorts stories and novellas that focus largely on the physical aspects of the characters. So The Man Who Would Be King makes a better movie than The Sound and the Fury because in the former, character is revealed through externalized action, while in the latter most of the drama takes place in the interior worlds of the characters that are hard to photograph. What movies do better than any other medium (including television) is place the viewer in a powerfully vicarious experience. We wince, twitch and squirm in our theater seats because we are in the characters’ shoes and share their experiences on a visceral level.
What novels do better than film is place the reader inside the psychological world of the character.
In The Death of Ivan Illich, Tolstoy takes us through the experience of a man dying in a way so vivid that we feel we really understand what it’s like to watch life slip away. But there is not a lot of filmable cinematic action, the most powerful part of the novel is completely uncinematic. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf takes us on stroll through the private thoughts and ruminations of several people, private thoughts that are enchanting in their novel form but become trite and confusing flashbacks or longwinded narration on the screen and bear no resemblance to the effortless way the text reveals the terrors and yearnings of these people we feel we know so well by the end of the book.
Another reader wants to stop comparing books to films:
Why, after a century of filmmakers adapting stories, books and plays for the screen, do some still not understand that no adaptation can be the source? All art should be evaluated for what it is, and not against some other type of art, even if the storyline behind both is the same. Most these days consider the film called The Shining a very good example of cinema, with masterful performances and the unmistakeable look of a Kubrick film. However, when it premiered, many fans of King's book were outraged. I remember my sister-in-law being fuming a couple of days after seeing it, complaining how details as well as whole scenes were changed, or simply left out.
Sometimes filmmakers have made changes in the story because they did not have the budget, time, resources, expertise, or technology to film certain scenes. At times, though, major changes have been made because they just wanted that change.
The point is the film is not the book, only the book is the book. Films should rise and fall based on how well they succeeded as a film. Dune wasn't a bomb because of some failure of the filmmaker to catch Paul's internal narrative as well as the book. It failed because in the end, it wasn't a good film (my apologies to my favorite director, David Lynch, for criticizing his only turkey).
The Dish 