Why don’t they make a film that actually happens like the book? Don’t you think that would be a great idea? In this article we will explore the phenomenon of books becoming films, and I will try my best to answer this question. I am sure more than one of you has asked themselves this a couple of times at least.
Adapting a story
We all have that particular book we loved the first time we read it and when it became a film it left us disappointed. Either they had trimmed super special moments, vanished entire sequences critical for character development, or simply showed a different setting of the world we had already built to the last detail in our mind. These and more changes can happen to a story and its protagonists when translating the narrative from literature to film. Contrary to popular belief, that does not always mean a movie is bad.
It’s just different
We can all agree reading a book is essentially different from watching a movie. And not only in terms of the physical support from where we get to experience the story —some pages or a screen—, but also in terms of the available narrative resources proper for each medium that directly impact the way a story unfolds.
Guillermo Del Toro, a famous mexican film director shared in an interview one of the most important guidelines when making a film: “whatever you decide to put into your script must be proved by the camera or the sound recorder.” This is because film is an audiovisual plattform, which means equal importance of images and sound are needed to deliver a message, so whatever you cannot see or hear is no material for a movie.
A good example for this statement are the character’s feelings. While in a book you can read how a character feels about something without them even saying a word or behaving expressly in a certain way, in films you will either need to hear or see a representation of how they are feeling in order to understand this inner world. Whether someone talks about it, or even if we just get to see them behaving in a very specific way, there are no other paths for conveying meaning in cinema other than hearing or seeing things.
Some examples
There are a lot of movies that were actually born from a previously published book or story. Some of them are pretty well known to be adaptations but there are other ones that maybe would not be that easy to spot. Here you got 3 film examples that you probably didn’t know were adaptations:
- Mood Indigo (Michel Gondry, 2013).
Sinopsis: Wealthy, inventive bachelor Colin endeavors to find a cure for his lover Chloe after she’s diagnosed with an unusual illness caused by a flower growing in her lungs.
From the book: Froth on the Daydream, by Boris Vian, 1947.
- The Dead (John Huston, 1987).
Sinopsis: Gabriel Conroy and wife Gretta attend an early January dinner with friends at the home of his spinster aunts, an evening which results in an epiphany for both of them.
From the short story: The Dead, by James Joyce, 1914.
- Shades of Day – New Directo’s Cut (Vitaly Sumin, 2023).
Sinopsis: The film crosses and re-crosses the thin line that separates tragedy from comedy. It introduces us to the enchanting LINDA, whose life is centered around a planned reunion with her former lover PAUL. Her plans change in remarkable ways as she encounters an extraordinary cast of characters, including a new lover and a movie producer who is being pursued by the Mafia.
From the short story: White Nights, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1848.
And the answer is…
Literature and Cinema are two different narrative mediums. They have their own and unique way for storytelling. While something is possible in one of them, it may be not as useful for the other. Sadly that is why it is so common for us to be disappointed with a movie when we already loved the book. But let me tell you something, there are actually some film adaptations that did a great job resembling the things happening in the book. I already gave you the name of one of them as the number 1 of the list above, now I want you to comment more examples in the Leave a Reply section.
Next time you watch a movie that is an adaptation from a book I invite you to focus on how the character’s feelings are shown on the film, and compare the different ways the book and the movie portray those things. I am sure you will find some interesting things. Hopefully after doing that you will agree on the fact that if a film is different from the book that does not necessarily mean the movie is bad.
Before we finish
You can watch Shades of Day on Prime Video, and first-hand experience this heartfelt film adaptation from the short story that is considered to be one of the greatest love stories ever written.
In this film Writer / Director / Producer Vitaly Sumin explores the boundaries for conveying meaning through the usage of color, editing and sound design, all working together in order to build the right atmosphere for his characters and the story they are telling. This one is the first part of our “Dostoevsky-L.A” project, which also will include “Crime and Punishment, LA” and “Idiot, L.A”.
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