Asking the wrong questions about books and movies
Michael Billington at The Guardian asks “Have any unarguably great novels actually been improved by adaptation?” He is referring to adaptation to cinema or the theatre. This kind of question is asked all the time, and is one of the questions that comes up whenever some great or popular book comes to the screen or stage (particularly the former). How many times have you heard someone, perhaps yourself, say, “I don’t think the movie was as good as the book”?
But if Billington’s question is part of a discussion about whether a novel should be dramatized, then it’s the wrong question to ask. Just because a story as it is portrayed in a movie is not as good as it is portrayed in print is irrellevant to the quality of the movie or whether it should have been dramatized in the first place.
The question is not whether a novel is improved by its dramatization, but whether dramatization is improved by having been based on a novel. What is important is not whether a novel is “improved by adaptation” (how could a novel be improved by anything other than the author rewriting it?), but whether a movie (or play) is a better play for having been based on the story from a novel–as opposed, say, to having been written from scratch by a screen writer (or playright).
The question is not, for example, would I rather go and see the movie “Sense and Sensibility” or read Jane Austen’s novel. I can do both and profit by it. The question is whether I would rather go see the movie “Sense and Sensibility” or some other movie about relationships based on a story by what is likely to be an inferior writer.
The comparisons between movies and books, or books to movies is seldom helpful. They are very different art forms, and should be judged by very different criteria. The purpose of a movie is not to be a good book, any more than the purpose of an apple is to be a good orange. Nor is the purpose of a movie to improve a book through adaptation.
The purpose of a good movie is to be a good movie, and that purpose is often furthered by adapting the story from a good book.
November 17th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Someone asked me what I thought of “Passion of the Christ.” I said, “I liked the book better.”
They replied, “Oh, it’s a book too?”
>>The purpose of a good movie is to be a good movie, and that purpose is often served by adapting the story from a good book.
November 18th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
This is a good and important distinction but what both books and movies have in common is that they tell a story. Some stories are more suited to the stage and some are more suited to the page.
It’s interesting how people always seem to say, the book was so much better. But movies have a much more dramatic emotional impact. Why do you suppose we say we like books more even though movies hit us harder?
November 18th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
I don’t know what’s happening to my posts. I said, in response to the quote I lifted from Martin, that it sounded Aristotelian. But, I quipped, the reason that I don’t like many movie adaptations of books is that the end is not to make a good movie, but to make money.
While I’m at it, I’ll respond to Andrew as well. I wouldn’t say that movies have hit me harder. When I compare the impact of, say, “Les Miserables” compared to the most recent movie adaptation (with Liam Neeson), I was singularly unimpressed and uninspired with the movie. The book, however, made a singular impression. I cried. Several times.
The musical adaptation is a good one, I think, and seldom fails to bring a tear as well.
“Lord of the Rings” is another transformational book for me. The screen adaptation was very good, in my opinion. I think I was edified by its vision of certain scenes, especially the Charge of the Rohirrim and the assembled peoples bowing to the hobbits. However, the book absolutely hit me harder. And continues to hit me harder.