That’s not a snarky internet question, a la “is it actually possible for you to be any more stupid than you are right now?” I mean it. Because about halfway through John Hillcoat’s faithful-as-possible version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, I suddenly couldn’t stop wondering: what’s the point of a film adaptation of a book?
I don’t mean for the film studios, because for them the point is the Daffy Duck-style dollar signs appearing in their eyes. A quick calculation by SlashFilm found that only two of the top 30 grossing films of last decade were original stories: Finding Nemo and Kung Fu Panda. Adaptations are great business decisions. They come pre-hyped, risk-reduced, and with a built-in audience ranging from curious onlookers to rabid fans.
And if you haven’t read the book in question? You probably don’t care where it came from. You might feel some of the pitfalls of books-to-film adaptation – too many characters, bloated running times, plot points stuffed in until the screenplay is oddly shapeless – but you might not.
No, I’m talking about the specific sensation of watching a faithful adaptation of a book you’ve already read. For example: you couldn’t say Hillcoat’s The Road is a bad movie. In many ways, it’s great, and some of the problems I had with it were those I already had with the source material. (Yes, I’m someone who thinks that the ending is a cheat, and one that’s almost on par with “he woke up and it was all a dream…”)
I’m a book-rereader and a movie-rewatcher, so it’s not knowing what’s going to happen that bothers me. The movie of The Road was faithful enough that I knew how it would happen, too.
I’ve ranted before about how movies like Watchmen suffered from too much fidelity, and would’ve been better served by taking more chances. That would help make them more medium-specific, but it’d also give them more of a reason to exist in the first place. With comic book adaptations, it’s not enough to just get to see the pictures move. With adaptations of a novel like The Road, it’s not enough – for me, at least – to create a visual landscape that matches the one the prose planted in my head.
(Which the movie did, without doubt. It’s one of the most convincing apocalypses ever put on screen.)
So: what’s the point? Is it to have an excuse to enjoy the story again? To see how it matches against what flickered in your imagination as you were reading? To spot the small, inevitable changes to the narrative? To hear how the dialogue sounds, spoken out loud? Is it curiosity about whether or not the movie got it ‘right’? Or that the movie experience is an upgrade, flat-out superior to the one offered by a novel?
Or are the two mediums so different that you don’t feel redundancy in even the most faithful adaptation – and I should just shut up about it?
#1 by Thomas Caldwell on January 29th, 2010
Hi Martyn
I don’t think you should shut up as it is a really interested discussion to have. However, I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for adaptations. Either they are trashed for ‘ruining’ the novel or they are labelled pointless for being too faithful. It’s becoming a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation!
I think the key is that they are different mediums that affect you in different ways. I loved the prose of the novel but I also loved the incredible visual details in the film. Same result but a different way of getting there. I actually saw the film first in this case and it worked wonderfully for me without having read the book first so in that sense it is successful in being able to stand on its own.
Cheers
Thomas
#2 by Manolis on January 29th, 2010
I rather dislike McCarthy’s prose stylings, which I concede is a highly subjective judgement once the prose is better than trash, but I thought The Road was far too simple a book to be ever called a classic: protective dad, sweet kid, unexplained apocalypse and cop-out ending — there’s simply nothing there structurally or thematically of any worth. People like that book for its prose because there’s nothing else whatsoever to really sink your teeth into (unless you count the cheap and manipulative dad-protects-son plot which is basically a fait accompli to produce “harrowing” drama.)
I haven’t seen the film, but I’d say the film had nothing to work with. The source material was so bare that you might as well have made another movie entirely than change a few things around.
#3 by Martyn on January 29th, 2010
Thomas: you’re right about the impossible criteria that’s been set up for adaptations – but hell, it’s not like the movies mind the impossibility, because adaptations are making more money than ever! So you think the experiences of reading and watching are different enough to make redundancy moot? I’m trying to think of a good analogy… like, say, two very different versions of the same song that you can love for different reasons?
Also, Thomas is too humble to post it, so let me do the honours… here’s his review of THE ROAD: http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2010/01/27/film-review-the-road-2009/
Manolis: while I enjoyed McCarthy’s THE ROAD – at least as much as you can enjoy something so dour – I think in essence I agree with you. I’ve described it as an amazing creative writing exercise more than an amazing book, and that’s because I also felt like it was fundamentally about language. I didn’t feel the same weight of meaning underneath that language that many others did.
So what’s your take on why it’s been so overwhelmingly embraced? Is it because it’s so schematic – just ‘the boy’ and ‘the man’, for example – to allow people to project their own weight into it?
#4 by Thomas Caldwell on January 30th, 2010
Thanks for the link Martyn! I wasn’t really being humble though, just forgetful as I usually self promote at every opportunity. I like your music analogy by the way. If I may turn it around then I think what you are saying is why go to see a band live if they are simply going to create the exact same sound as the studio album.
Anyway, I think you’ve basically nailed the key issue – it’s all about the money. There’s a huge portion of the population who will see a film over reading a novel so if you’ve got a good story then why not re-package and re-sell it as a film? Actually doing the novel justice is almost an added bonus (when it happens).
But I know that’s not the issue you’ve raised here. What you are asking is why bother with the film, if it does nothing different, if you’ve already read the book and I suppose I am saying that I do think the experiences are different enough to make the redundancy moot.
My big complaint with ‘faithful’ adaptations is when the filmmakers stick so dogmatically to the plot and dialogue that they lose the meaning and nuances of the text. Sometimes significant changes have to be made from novel to film to adequate express what is really underlying the text. In other words, what you said in your piece about fidelity.
#5 by Manolis on January 30th, 2010
A writing exercise is a very good description!
The Road actually reminded me most of Dancer in the Dark. Both I thought to be devised solely to create maudlin, highly charged and emotionally manipulative situations regardless of how terribly plotted, thematically ridiculous and full of terribly one-dimensional characters the story might be.
Nevertheless, Dancer in the Dark I loved because von Trier and Bjork were so effective in making me emotional and forget the preposterous situation the characters found themselves in. They played with filmic devices that cause emotional responses and did so artfully.
I think people liked The Road because the story is designed to produce an emotional response, and that coupled with the sense that something “literary” has been read and understood makes for a positive reaction.
I think McCarthy’s prose, though, is trash, a self-consciously literary style with little going for it. I agree wholeheartedly with A Reader’s Manifesto (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers), which derides the modern American fiction of Proulx, McCarthy, Auster (I loved New York Trilogy, was bored by most everything else) and DeLillo (White Noise is one of my most despised books).
#6 by Martyn on February 1st, 2010
It’s interesting how different films, striving for Big Emotional Payoff, hit people in different ways. Some buy into them, others find them overtly manipulative or hollow. I know that I loved Wes Anderson’s RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, and thought they had real, deep emotion under all that artifice. Then his next two films I did find flat and hollow, and it made me doubt what I’d loved about the earlier ones…
(But, hell, I loved WHITE NOISE! Perhaps because it was always more about Big Ideas than Big Emotions…)
#7 by Martyn on February 1st, 2010
Oh, and Thomas: I love the “why see a band live if they sound just like their album?” analogy, and plan to steal it wholeheartedly.
#8 by Manolis on February 1st, 2010
I didn’t like WHITE NOISE because I thought the big idea was a trite, unoriginal load of crap.
That’s always the risk with big idea books: you’re always going to divide the audience between those who loathe and love the big idea.
WHITE NOISE I consider the hipster leftist’s ATLAS SHRUGGED or THE FOUNTAINHEAD.
#9 by Manolis on February 1st, 2010
And I love Somerset Maugham to death most of all because his views about the world I have a close affinity with.
Obviously, anyone else who ain’t as enamoured by those views (I suppose aloof, curious, misanthropic humanism is a decent description) ain’t gonna like Maugham as much as I do.
#10 by Martyn on February 2nd, 2010
As much as I love WHITE NOISE – and LIBRA, too, and even most of UNDERWORLD – I have to admit that calling it “the hipster leftist’s ATLAS SHRUGGED” is a great line. Just for that, I promise to read some Somerset Maugham – who’s been a massive gap in my literary credibility so far.
#11 by Manolis on February 3rd, 2010
Phew. After writing that, I thought it was a bit harsh and I was hoping you wouldn’t get offended. I had even prepared my but-some-of-my-best-friends-are-hipster-leftists defence.
And I read Animal Man based on your recommendation. Awesomeness all the way.
And Maugham is a perfect author for the subject of this post — a shit load of his books and plays have been adapted to screen (scroll down and you’ll find the list): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham
Interesting piece of trivia: Bill Murray agreed to the lead role in Ghostbusters on the condition that his adaptation of The Razor’s Edge, a Maugham novel, be made with himself starring.
My recommendation: if you bother to start reading Maugham, avoid Of Human Bondage and The Razor’s Edge. They’re the fan favourites, but that’s just because they’re both bildungsromans.
I say go Cakes and Ale, or maybe Moon and Sixpence.
#12 by Martyn on February 6th, 2010
Glad you enjoyed ANIMAL MAN; I think it stands up amazingly well, all these years later, and it it has some real heart to it to make sure it never becomes just oooh-aren’t-we-clever meta-gameplay. I picked up a copy of CAKES AND ALE yesterday, too. (It also has someone with animal powers in it, right? Right?)