It’s difficult to watch any book to film adaptations without having some strong opinions on the integrity and quality of the output. This goes double for readers, who tend to form deep and intricate bonds with our favorite works. It’s easy to wail and moan that, for example, Starship Troopers was a completely ridiculous interpretation of Heinlein, It’s harder to see Starship Troopers for what it is (i.e. a completely ridiculous interpretation of sci-fi monster stories). That said, it’s harder to honor those films that manage to nail it- to illuminate and build upon a favorite story without degrading its original quality. To that end, here’s a woefully incomplete list of my top book to film adaptations: The Good, The Bad, & The Inexplicably Absent
The Good
Let the Right One In
A good adaptation should not only be true to the integrity of the source material, but it should best condense, alter and fine tune for a different medium. Let the Right One In succeeds in being a terrific film for this reason; the liberal cuts condense the many backstories and head hopping down to their most essential points. While the film loses a bit of the human horror in doing so, it maintains a swifter and more graceful pace and leaves delicious ambiguity where the book delved into detail. Most notably: Eli’s ambiguous gender and the disturbing relationship with servant Hakar. What in the book is shown as outright sinister, evil and depraved, the movie shows as complicated, subtle and ambiguous. Plus, it’s hard to imagine how the final scene in the swimming pool could be improved upon in any medium.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Capturing the frenetic, cynical hilarity of Hunter S. Thompson is a job I don’t envy, particularly with his committed and near rabid fan base. Creating credible trip scenes is an added hurdle. Major kudos go to director Terry Gilliam (perfectly suited for this material) and Johnny Depp (who manages to transform his usual dreamboat-ness into wacky psychonaut with nary a prosthetic in sight. That’s talent, folks.)
Company of Wolves
One of the more creative reinterpretations on this list, The Company of Wolves does a terrific job condensing three of Angela Carter’s short stories into a cogent and smart film. Perhaps, as a female werewolf aficionada, I’m biased. But Angela Lansbury, Stephen Rea with a unibrow, fabulous feminist commentary and some wicked (and unconventional) werewolf transformation scenes? I mean, come on.
Honorable Mentions: Brokeback Mountain, Wonder Boys, The Lord of the Rings Triology
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Wow, it’s not so easy putting together a list of books that cry out to be made into movies. The people running Hollywood are pretty thorough – if a successful novel is remotely filmable, you can bet it has been filmed…sometimes more than once.
If there’s one thing I think people should understand regarding adaptations, it’s that films and novels are two different creative mediums. It’s much like how computer monitors display color versus how printed materials handle color — the two will never match exactly. (see subtractive color vs. additive color) Really, my only requirement is that the film should not go against the heart of the novel.
In the future, every work of art will be like Star Wars.
The movie that didn’t meet my Great Expectations
Adaptation is a tricky thing. Some books that should have been forgotten go on to make us all miserable on the silver screen, while others take on new life. Still others get reinvented entirely (like how the James Bond franchise got turned from contemporary spy-thrillers into something more like science-fiction before the two most recent movies reined things in a little). As for my two responses to the Questions of the Week:
Perhaps one of the best movies of any SF novel is Blade Runner. I grew up admiring most of Philip Dick’s novels, including “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, but at the risk of uttering heresy I’d say that the movie is better than the novel. It tightens the plot and adds visual brilliance and a film noir atmosphere. At the risk of uttering even further heresy I’d argue that the original version of the movie is better than the later Director’s Cut. The original has Harrison Ford’s voice-over, which I know he detested, but it adds to the film noir mood; he speaks like a figure from an Edward Hopper painting, sitting alone in a bar with a dangling cigarette and a crumpled raincoat. Also, maybe the ambiguity of the original’s ending is more haunting than the bleakness of the Director’s Cut.
Watching a film made from one of your favorite books can be a frightening experience. Terrible dialogue, missing characters, or an inexplicably changed ending can leave you feeling miserable and outraged. There are few such movies that I ever enjoyed, but Clueless was one of them. Instead of attempting to recreate Jane Austen’s Emma in all of its period glory, the writers of Clueless went for a modern way to present the story that, in already being so altered, did not offend with alterations. I enjoyed it, but certainly not more than the book.