It’s Oscars Night in Hollywood and everyone is getting ready to find out which movies and actors are the best. And, as usual, there’s talk about the movies that were made from books. It isn’t a new topic at all. I’ve written about book/movie adaptations before myself. But in a new article on Slate, Willing Davidson makes a few interesting points I hadn’t considered before.
First, he makes the distinction between movies based on “popular” books (i.e., the Harry Potter books and movies, the Jason Bourne franchise – all, presumably, with “ready-built brand appeal”) and movies based on “literary” books. With regards to the latter, Davidson refers to books that are somehow more literary than other books. According to him, “literary” books don’t make good movies. He uses recent movies The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road as examples of – in his opinion – terrible movies made from great books. I don’t quite understand why a “popular” book makes a better movie than a “literary” one, but I do understand that some authors write in such a way that it would be nearly impossible to translate the silences on a page into silence on a screen.
Davidson’s second point is one that’s simultaneously simple and complex: “Novels are long, but movies are short. It’s impossible to encapsulate the tonal shifts of a book like Revolutionary Road in a feature-length film, no matter how long those two hours feel.” He’s right, of course – books contain so much more than what can be shown on screen. Movies are about telling a story within a set time period. Books allow for much more character development. But saying that books are long and movies are short doesn’t fully answer why some books do make successful transitions to the silver screen.
Davidson seems to be of the doubting persuasion – he’s inclined to think the books are always better than the movies. I usually fall into that category as well. As a general rule, the books are better than the movies. But, at the same time, I’m also willing to suspend my disbelief and appreciate a movie adaptation for itself: a movie that bears some similarities to a well-loved book. So perhaps the question isn’t “why are the books always better than the movie?” Maybe the question is “why do we feel the need to constantly compare the two, when each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses?” Instead of complaining about the terrible movie adaptation, maybe we should just appreciate the movie for what it is, rather than bemoaning what it isn’t.
(For a reminder of the literary origins of some of tonight’s Oscar nominees, read my previous post on the subject.)
