Why Do Most Adaptations Suck?


by Zoë Pollock

It's not easy to turn a great novel into a film , according to Richard Brody, who notes that the usual attempts involve some "plot, the dialogue, maybe some voice-over, in a kind of Classics Illustrated surrogate for the book":

The subject of the cinema is the world, of which good books are a crucial part; whether filming with documentary curiosity or with artistic ambition, they’re hard for directors to avoid—and there’s no reason for a director to avoid them. But there is a rule of thumb that’s worth noting: a director is likely to stumble when taking on the work of a writer who is a greater artist. Many directors of moderate merit do well in capturing their own experience or that of others of modest and practical insight—but when they lay hold of works of genius, they simply aren’t up to the material and reveal not the vastness of the author’s imagination but the limits of their own. Welles and Godard are in their element when they film Shakespeare, as is Bresson with Dostoyevsky, Hawks with Hemingway, Sirk with Chekhov. Those of us who are standing on the shoulders of giants shouldn’t try to wrestle with them; only giants can wrestle with giants, and adaptation, if it’s any good, is no mere mark of respect but an active and dangerous contention, an assertion and self-assertion that is as brave and as daring as it is potentially catastrophic.