What the Fran

Book adaptations

On Sunday I went to the cinema to watch Fellowship of the Ring, back on the big screen for its twenty-fifth anniversary. I was telling some friends barely over twenty-five years old about conversations we were having in 2001. "I hope it's going to be good," we all worried. Like people always worry about their favourite books getting made into films. Because we didn't know. We couldn't know. Peter Jackson made comedy-horror films out of plasticine. I'd seen Heavenly Creatures because, you know, lesbian. But that was it. A lot of the press had been shit-stirring. (Jackson refers to this in a rambly intro to the re-release.)

We didn't know how legendary it was going to become.

Of course some people still complained about liberties being taken. The encyclopedic extras on the DVD covered a lot of the changes and why they were made. I think there's a consensus they were a good adaptation though.

Before the film there was a trailer for Wuthering Heights. Which provoked some groans. I'm not up on the discourse. Even still, I know that Margot Robbie is too old, Frankenstein's Monster is too white, and they have both definitely seen an iphone. I'm sure people are upset about costumes also. I don't feel massively attached to Wuthering Heights the book and the film is clearly attempting A Style. I'll probably watch it, why not.

What I will see next week, and have read, is Hamnet. I wasn't surprised they were making it into a film but when I watched the trailer and heard all the "love story for the ages"... I liked the book and the vibe I took away from it was definitely Agnes being very "this fucking guy" about her husband. Which, I dunno, feels less "love story for the ages." I'm excited to see it anyway.

Then there was Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein recently too. Which wasn't my thing, but it was clearly very much del Toro's thing and that is great.

I'm not against adaptations of books. Far from. There are many excellent adaptations of books I like. Room, I think is a great adaptation. As was Donoghue's The Wonder. Pride and Prejudice 1995, the solid gold classic. Muppets Christmas Carol. On TV more recently: Pachinko and Station Eleven. Fingersmith is a smart adaptation.

The Story of Your Life / Arrival, Brokeback Mountain, and The World to Come are very strong adaptations. They are short stories - that seems key. One of the major complaints is what gets cut. With short stories you can also add. There is room to breathe.

But things have to be cut. Just for time. And things have to be changed because visual media are, well, visual. We don't get the interiority that is the strength of the novel. We get other benefits. But stuff that works when we inhabit a character - like understanding bad decisions and so on - doesn't fly when we are just watching them do it.

So here's a trick. If I haven't read the book yet, I won't. I'll watch the film first. That way, if I read the book, it expands. In a good adaptation the changes make sense. Also, it's okay if other people adapt something differently than I would! In fact, everyone is going to because that's how it works. We all see different things in a story. (This is what fanfiction is for.)

Other small thoughts:

Inevitably I'll have forgotten a bunch of stuff that I will remember tomorrow so who knows, maybe there will be a part two.