“By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This is to me a miracle.”
-Kurt Vonnegut
Books are glorious things. And they unfold — unfurl, unleash, unravel — worlds which we might have never visited or dreamt of ourselves. The sensations sparked by the combinations of words within radiate throughout our entire forms, placing us on a high plain of imagination. The possibilities stretch without limits to infinity. It’s something like a miracle, as Mr. Vonnegut so rightly suggested in the above statement.
Something similar could be said to happen with films. How each of us interprets a film has incalculable possibilities. However, in adapting a book to a film, there are differences, and they are treacherous. I am not at all suggesting that adapting a book into a film is something to be shunned. There’s definitely manipulation in each prospect — both penning a book and adapting a book into a film. Each project’s author has designs on their audience experiencing something that leads to certain judgments, understandings, and perceptions. But every member of that audience can take something different away, a uniquely individualized version of the story that was told.
Here lies the giant, hulking stumbling block for many of those who attempt to adapt a book into a film is this: Can the film version do justice to a story the audience might have already read and of which they have their own versions? In the cinematic medium, we — as viewers — are witnessing a very individualized interpretation of a book’s story. True, there may be many different people involved in creating any given film, directors, producers, editors, score composers, actors, etc. But there is only one outcome — a single feature film — to which the audience bears witness. There is not quite so much infinity with which to play once one has witnessed the movie version. The faces of actors, certain gestures, certain landscapes, certain narrative decisions might catch in one’s mind. Then that personal interpretation of the story is likely forever altered/overlapped by the film adaptation seen, and never completely erased from memory.
I say the aforementioned with a bit of reservation. And this is due to the nature of all story-telling. What’s beautiful here is that once the artist/author/director/whatever has laid the final line or faded to black on the final scene, s/he doesn’t have say over how audiences interpret the work anymore. Power still resides within that work to manipulate the minds of those who digest it. But the possibilities, even those the artist never imagined, are irrevocably limitless in form. That is the wondrous essence of story-telling. It can be a nearly transcendent experience for someone and/or many, whatever the medium through which the tale is told.
This column will look at a number of book to film adaptations. Some are successful in conceptualizing the story from page to screen. Others are not so successful. Some are astonishing masterpieces while others are devastating follies. This will be entirely based on my opinion and interpretation of the story’s themes as well as its intent, as well as how skillfully those were committed to film. The first tale up to bat is Annie E. Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain, which was adapted to film in 2005 by director Ang Lee. "If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed."
- Stanley Kubrick
