Adaptation.

[sister_luck]

I watched something yesterday afternoon that made me think about adaptations - not the biological kind, but when a certain source material is taken and transferred to another medium.

The most common kind of course is transforming words into pictures - a filmed version of a novel or a short story. The written word and film offer different possibilities, but are also restricted by different limitations. As a reader, you create your own film version in your head. A film adaptation offers the audience one reader's perspective - that may match yours in some points or not at all. Especially with novels, a lot of content has to be cut - descriptive passages can be transformed into one frame; the narrative voice has to be translated either visually or with the aid of voice-over. On the other hand, condensing the narrative - if done well - can heighten the emotional impact, especially if the quality of the acting, photography, music etc. matches or surpasses that of the writing.

So, you see, I know that the experience of a filmed version will be different to what goes on when I'm reading something. I know that the person who writes the screenplay version has every right to change things for the sake of his or her creative vision. That's fine. I even think that the original writer shouldn't have much say in it - that is, if he or she has given away the rights, they may complain if they don't like the adaptation, but that's it. If there are no rights issues, the source material is fair game anyway. That's not to say that I must like every adaptation - I might even object to it, but I still believe in that right to adapt something to your wishes.

What brought this long-winded rambling along, you may ask? I saw a tv version of Ian Rankin's The Falls yesterday. It's one of his Inspector Rebus novels which I've been following for ages and this is the second attempt to film them. I haven't seen any of the earlier John Hannah as Inspector Rebus versions, so can't comment on them. (But I would watch them, just for John Hannah.)

What I got yesterday though, was deeply disappointing and extremely misleading. Anyone who has read The Falls won't recognize the plot and if you decide after having watched the tv version you want to read the book you'll be in for a big surprise. The credits said it was based on the books by Ian Rankin - that should have warned me. Apart from the fact that the writer changed the main character and turned him into a womanizing football fan, he took four characters and one plot element of the original novel and then proceeded to tell a completely different story. Funniest bit? One of the original villains, who I suspect is named Dr Devlin for a reason, ends up as the first victim in the tv version. Responsibly for his death is the person who is the actual victim in the novel. Oh, and that title? Doesn't make any sense now. I do know that the original novel is a bit too complex for a 2-hour tv version as it contains two loosely connected parallel plotlines, but then they shouldn't have called it The Falls. I suppose that retaining the title of the novel was done for marketing purposes, but it's rather misleading.

If I try to remove my appreciation for the novels from the equation, I still can't say that I liked it much. There is much better crime drama around.

I would have given up in frustration, if it had been fan fiction - which is an unauthorised adaptation in its own right.


So, your thoughts on adaptations:
Yay or nay?
The film better than the book?
Faithful to the original or lee-way for the re-creator?

Comments

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

There's a film that explores this "problem": Adaptation, from a script by Charlie Kaufman. At first I thought it was all just Charlie Kaufman's imagination, but when I was writing something about Kaufman myself I realised that the book on which this film is supposedly loosely based, does exist. As a result the whole intertwines reality and fiction.

Another very strange and very loose adaptation is the one from A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. The film starts out as an adaptation, but leaves the writen word quickly behind. Where Irving lets his narrative pan out over decades and focuses on the unwavering faith of the title character, the film takes one small fact from the book, one storyline that keeps re-emerging, but isn't the main storyline, i.e. the search of the protagonist (storyteller) for his father. Thankfully this adaptation is a rather enjoyable and funny film and by changing the name of Owen Meany into Simon Birch it even lets the people know that they won't be getting the book. I saw it before I read the book though and noticed they took several things from it and made something different with it. I can understand that when you've read the book first it's very disturbing, because seeing these scenes gives you a certain pattern of expectation, but you'll never get what the book was.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I knew that someone would bring up that film - I haven't seen it, because you know, never got round to it, but it sounded very interesting.

I was quite surprised when I read Forrest Gump because that was quite different from the film, too. Doesn't happen often that I watch the film first, then read the book later, but I can deal with that better, because the reading experience means for me that I get an alternative film version in my head. If I've read the book first, then watch the film I'm usually overpowered by the visuals and the book version gets lost (until I re-read it).