The following blog entry was written by READ magazine's summer intern, Craig Nadler. Craig will be leaving us next week. And we will be sad to see him go. Don't go, Craig!!
Awhile ago I went to the movies. I decided to see Angels and Demons, basing this decision on the fact that I L-O-V-E-D the novel by Dan Brown. Two hours and twenty minutes later, as I watched the credits begin to roll over the screen, an old expression came to mind: lost in translation. I'd heard the saying before, but its meaning was never truly clear to me until that moment. I exited the theater and walked down the long hallway, surrounded on all sides by "coming soon" posters. And, it soon became clear that each title was more familiar than the next. Isn't that one based on a fairy tale? Wasn't that a book first? Hmm ... Is Hollywood running out of good ideas? I guess it makes sense to adapt existing plots to the big (and small) screen. Setting. Check. Characters. Check. Conflict. Check. It's all there. And, if a piece of writing already has success in that form, there's a good chance it'll have success with a big budget and cameras, too. Right? Wrong!
Big screen adaptations are not foolproof plans. There has been a fair share of flops as a result of the re-imagination of literature. The 2004 adaptation of the comic book super heroine Catwoman was a box office disaster. In 2007, the film version of Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass flopped hard. Even retellings of classic literature, like the 1995 film version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, are not guaranteed box office gold. As I thought more about the curse of adapted literature, I tried to figure out why something so treasured on the page could prove to be so condemned on the screen.
Part of the value of a good piece of literature is its ability to be interpreted by the reader. Words on a page do not force feed an image to the reader. Even with precise details, an author can only present so much. It's the reader's ability to create a mental image of his own that makes reading such an invigorating experience. Although actors are talented, they cannot often express the same emotions that an author can detail on the page. Sometimes, what goes on in the head of a character is more profound than how he or she behaves on the screen. An actor can portray the emotion "anger" on-screen through squinted eyes or a loud voice or a waving fist. However, that's it. Beyond these classic representations of anger, there are a limited number of ways to present this physically (and visually). Through writing, however, an author can express the same anger with much more depth. Through language and literary devices (like similes and metaphors), the description of an angry person can go on for pages!
Come to think of it, the film adaptations of literature most successful and memorable are those that add a creative twist to a classic. Take, for instance, the film 10 Things I Hate About You (which is about to premiere as a television show on July 7 on ABC Family), based on William Shakespeare's play "The Taming of the Shrew." And, there's also the 1999 film Cruel Intentions, based on the 18th century French epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Laclos. In both movies, the setting is updated to the late 20th century, and the characters are represented as American teenagers. It seems a successful book does not guarantee a successful motion picture. Often, the literature's message can get lost in translation from page to theater. Don't wait around for a novel to be adapted into a film. Go out and buy the book or the play or the comic book in its original form; it's guaranteed to be a smash hit!
