Can there ever really be a fair comparison between the private, enchanting world of literature and the public, epic medium of film? Both create powerful, arresting journeys for us to sink into and experience, both have the ability to offer depth and wisdom that we will treasure, as well as entertain and delight enormously. At their best, they provoke emotion, thought, internal and social debate, wonder and introspection. I don't believe you can classify either medium as simple entertainment; literature and films have on countless occasions paved the way for social change, helping engender understanding and compassion by telling stories or presenting different viewpoints in a world in which we can find ourselves rigidly set in our ways. Think for a minute of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird; this is just one example that floats into my head as I type.
If you want to get into comparisons, I think it would be a great injustice to extol one medium over the other, but when it comes to making a movie of a well-loved or best-selling book, there is no doubt the path is a tricky one. The simple fact is that every reader brings much of himself to a book. One of the most compelling things about literature is its limitless possibility for reinvention and interpretation by each individual who reads it. So when you take a book that has moved you, and consider that it may also have been appreciated by people around you; a stranger on the bus, your mother, a colleague at work, your sister's boyfriend, and so on, you have a veritable universe of independent responses and interpretations right there, each one as individual and unique as the person that experienced it. The book becomes personal, intimate. The way in which each of us relates to that story becomes the expression of an individualistic thought process, and thereby, lends itself to hundreds and thousands of people, and to countless re-readings by the same person at different points in his or her life.
With film, it's exactly the opposite; one could reasonably argue that with a movie, the viewer becomes passive, subjected wholly to the expression of another (one person or one small group of people, as I doubt there are many films today that are produced by at less than at least a small team). So when you watch a movie based on your favorite book, what you get to experience is the personal vision that the director and his creative team have of that story. It may be compelling and fascinating, and may be the best movie ever made. But there is almost no chance that it will be a hundred percent what the book was to you.
I frankly think that the only person fully qualified to make a film out of a book would be the actual writer of the book himself! Think about it; only the creator of the original work is able to be true to the spirit and the intent of any adaptation of the work itself. That isn't to say that movie adaptations of books can't be successful. Many beautiful and haunting masterpieces of film began life as novels. The English Patient is one such successful adaptation in that while it may not strive to replicate the vast richness of Michael Ondaatje's sprawling novel, it understands the depth of the story itself, and strives to create a whole new language for itself, ungoverned by the strong poetic writing of Ondaatje, but paying homage to it in subtle ways that weave through the entire film. Its cinematography visually echoes the memorable quality of the language and the actors' brutally intense performances are a nod to the emotional force of the story.
That's just one example. At the end of the day, the irresistible thing about both movies and books is that they allow us, one way or another, to indulge in a vision of a reality outside of our own. It's true that a great many books have been transformed into disappointing movies, but that may have something to do with the fact that finding that suitable balance between the written word and its hundreds of possible visual representations is always going to be a gamble. The best way to enjoy both the book and the movie is to appreciate each medium for its strengths, and then go along for the ride.