![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonI decided to see what movies were on On Demand the other night in preparation for a movie night with Lynn later in the month. (I predict: Johnny Depp.) While surfing through the list of possibilities, I noticed a movie called The River King. Now, the book is one of my very favoritest books, so I pressed the Info button with some trepidation. Sure enough, it was about Abel Gray investigating a death at a prestigious prep school. I hadn't even been aware they'd made a movie of Hoffman's book and I was highly skeptical they'd do it justice. The one ray of hope, as far as I could see, was that Edward Burns played Abel and Jennifer Ehle played Betsy. I trusted them as actors, even if I don't trust film makers to always get it right.
Understand me, I love movies. I just don't think that, by its nature, film is a particularly complex medium. The most complex movie ever made can never be as complex as a really good novel. Film is collaborative, despite the French obsession with the concept of the auteur. The director's vision is always going to be mitigated by the script he's given, the eye of the cinematographer, the demands of the producer and actors and agents and studio heads... Auteurs can come close to imposing their own vision on things, but never as close as a novelist.
And The River King is such an amazing combination of wonder, complex characters and story—layer upon rich layer, always turning into something you hadn't expected at the next bend in the river. It's about the choices we make, good and bad, about learning to live with them; about being swept along on the societal tide, pushed towards the safer shore where everything is neat and laid out for you, or swimming cross-purposes for the more difficult shore where the wildwood crowds close and the stranger birds sing from the trees.
It's also a mystery about a boy's death. Because film has to simplify and make choices about what to portray in a complex story, that's the one story of many they chose. I will say that I wasn't heartbroken by this movie. I had one horrible moment where I thought they might simplify even further and go for a conventional resolution, but was relieved they didn't. They didn't portray the richness of the story, certainly not the richness of the characters. The two adult leads were good, well chosen for the characters, as well as the two "adolescent" leads. Ms. Ehle did the best she could with the script she was given—indeed probably put more into Betsy than was on the page—because they reduced her character to a impulsive, indecisive, shallow woman. The book version of Betsy was certainly indecisive and impulsive, but not shallow. She struggled against real concerns, motivated by real insecurities and past history, all of which were lost in the movie. And the character of Abel, although more substantive, lost all of the juicy grayness that made him so interesting.
The movie was beautifully filmed, absolutely gorgeous, and it did manage some of the wonder of the book. They stayed true to its spirit—I have to give them that. That isn't always the case in film adaptations. They didn't ruin the book.
And therein lies a strange conundrum: if they make a bad film of a good book, the book should still be the same as it was, but that isn't always the case for me. It changes the book in ways that can never be retrieved. I suppose it's because novels are also a collaborative experience. Only instead of writers, directors, cinematographers and actors collaborating, a novel is a more intimate collaboration between the writer and the reader. And nobody can properly adapt the film inside each individual reader's heart and mind.
Understand me, I love movies. I just don't think that, by its nature, film is a particularly complex medium. The most complex movie ever made can never be as complex as a really good novel. Film is collaborative, despite the French obsession with the concept of the auteur. The director's vision is always going to be mitigated by the script he's given, the eye of the cinematographer, the demands of the producer and actors and agents and studio heads... Auteurs can come close to imposing their own vision on things, but never as close as a novelist.
And The River King is such an amazing combination of wonder, complex characters and story—layer upon rich layer, always turning into something you hadn't expected at the next bend in the river. It's about the choices we make, good and bad, about learning to live with them; about being swept along on the societal tide, pushed towards the safer shore where everything is neat and laid out for you, or swimming cross-purposes for the more difficult shore where the wildwood crowds close and the stranger birds sing from the trees.
It's also a mystery about a boy's death. Because film has to simplify and make choices about what to portray in a complex story, that's the one story of many they chose. I will say that I wasn't heartbroken by this movie. I had one horrible moment where I thought they might simplify even further and go for a conventional resolution, but was relieved they didn't. They didn't portray the richness of the story, certainly not the richness of the characters. The two adult leads were good, well chosen for the characters, as well as the two "adolescent" leads. Ms. Ehle did the best she could with the script she was given—indeed probably put more into Betsy than was on the page—because they reduced her character to a impulsive, indecisive, shallow woman. The book version of Betsy was certainly indecisive and impulsive, but not shallow. She struggled against real concerns, motivated by real insecurities and past history, all of which were lost in the movie. And the character of Abel, although more substantive, lost all of the juicy grayness that made him so interesting.
The movie was beautifully filmed, absolutely gorgeous, and it did manage some of the wonder of the book. They stayed true to its spirit—I have to give them that. That isn't always the case in film adaptations. They didn't ruin the book.
And therein lies a strange conundrum: if they make a bad film of a good book, the book should still be the same as it was, but that isn't always the case for me. It changes the book in ways that can never be retrieved. I suppose it's because novels are also a collaborative experience. Only instead of writers, directors, cinematographers and actors collaborating, a novel is a more intimate collaboration between the writer and the reader. And nobody can properly adapt the film inside each individual reader's heart and mind.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 10:41 am (UTC)You hit the nail on the head here. This is why I never look forward to a movie based on a book; I'll view them as two completely separate pieces of work. It's that little separation that allows me to sit through crap like I, Robot and not throw a shoe through the TV screen.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-19 11:09 am (UTC)The downside is that if the movie I see first is total crap, I never want to read the book. And I'm sure I've missed out on some terrific books that way. Come to think of it, even if they're not crappy movies. I bought The English Patient after seeing the movie and it sat unread on my shelf for years. I finally "donated" it to the library when I was packing up to move.