by Lori Heaford

Created on: January 19, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Books and movies are totally different media. It sounds obvious, but is rarely taken into account. The scope within the written form for development of literary conventions, such as plot and character on the simplest level, is made possible in part by the way in which it is presented to the 'audience'. It takes time to read a novel, during which not only do we grow to understand characters and situations on a deeper level, but we have time and space to consider our responses, question values that have been exposed within us, consult ancillary references etc.

It is just not possible to have these reflective elements within the bounds of cinematography. A film is a 'quick buzz', most often a purely commercial enterprise. It is on a par with taking time over a sumptuous meal, savouring every mouthful, tasting new flavours, perhaps, coming away with the feeling of having had 'an experience', as compared with grabbing a quick burger on the run. The burger suffices and isn't bad, but it doesn't quite satisfy in the same way.

The problems (i.e. disappointments) come when viewers expect to respond in the same way to a film version of a treasured book. Maybe this is a desire to see our imagined canvas come to life; although, as our own views are so entirely subjective, it is not likely that any director will see things exactly as we do. Maybe, instead, we are looking for a version that is 'easier', some way to get the same pleasure and personal interaction without having to spend days, weeks, months developing and building it. We are bemoaning our inability to do, from the novel to the screen, what the theatre does from the play to the stage; and even theatre directors reserve the right to reposition classic dramas in modern settings and situations.

I have read other blogs here discussing the fact that stories are often distorted when adapted for film. Yet literature (classic) is riddled with distortions, mistellings of tales, poetic licence. Shakespeare himself is known to have rewritten a number of historical events, because they presumably made a better story the way he dramatised them.

In the film of The Beach, based on Alex Garland's debit novel of the same name, for example, much was made at the time of the fact that Leonardo di Caprio insisted on bedding the French girl, which doesn't happen in the book. (Strangely, no one commented on the fact that one of the central characters, Ducky, is not even present in the film.) The point, though, is that the film is 'based'

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