Rumki Chowdhry on Film adpations

Film Adaptions: They Are What They Are

Film adaptations of novels are tricky for many reasons. One who has read the novel will most definitely have high expectations of the adaptation of that novel. Those expectations are, almost always, unfulfilled. Why?

The Vision

The obvious reason for 'why' is that we, each, envision the characters, plot and settings of the novel differently. We each, especially the director of the adaptation, will have formed a different picture in our mind.

The Time

Work, studies, family take up most of our times as priorities, but when we do have time to ourselves, we can read. That is why reading one book can take hours and hours of reading and often, that time is spread across a number of weeks. A film adaptation is constrained to a mere, give or take, two hours. This is because a novel requires us to read detailed description of an environment or attire, while that same imagery and sensory is shown on the Blue-Ray, DVD or Theater, not requiring us to use our imaginations whatsoever. 

The Space

Has a line been changed from its original novel format to something else on-screen? There is often a plethora of detail and dialogue to fit into a film adaptation. One might find a change in dialogue, a cut of dialogue, scenes meshed together, or scenes tossed around like a caesar salad. The director has to take into consideration that not everyone who is watching his/her film has read the novel from which it was inspired/adapted. 

Therefore, scenes will not be placed exactly in chronological order or in the order of occurrence in the novel. Even more, dialogue might be altered. 

The Cuts

It's very sad when a scene you've read in the novel is excluded from its adaptation, but time constraint prevents the director and producers from including every scene in. Or, it simply would have been too confusing for the viewers who have not read the book to understand the significance of a particular scene.

What to do, what to do, hmmm....

I cannot count the number of times I've heard and guiltily used the term, 'The book is so much better.' The book will always be better than its film adaptation because: one, you will have impossible expectations for the director to meet; two, your imagination of the happenings is unique to yourself; three, there's just too much to fit into two hours, give or take.

So, next time you watch a film and you think 'The book was so much better;' think about how much the director and screenwriter needed to take into consideration before adapting it for the Big Screen or home theater. Although we should all give the movie makers a break, but there are the occasional novel-film adaptations that frustrate the reader.

What got me thinking about this particular topic? I remembered being in high school and doing a film vs. novel paper on Charles Dickens' 'Great Expectations.'

Recently, after asking book-lovers, 'What are you reading nowadays,' the reply was 'The Hunger Games.' My cousin gifted me with the trilogy and DVD. I love how the film tries to capture the heart and soul of the plot. It's probably one of the most accurate adaptations I've seen and the director mixed and matched the scenes flawlessly together so that it made sense to viewers who have not read the novel.

At the moment, I'm scripting a book-to-screen adaptation and all I can hope is that readers enjoy it and viewers understand it. 

Kind Regards,

Rumki 

Rumki Chowdhry is a regular contributor on the Brit Writers blog