Disclaimer: This blog was published earlier in one of my other blog portals. I added a few things here and there and re-packaged it to publish it here
So, you like movies eh? Quiz time then. Have you heard the likes of Julius J. Epstein, Philip J. Epstein, and Howard Koch? Or Steven Jailian? Or Ken Kesey?
Most
probably not if you are not a literature major. But then, we should
have, because they were the authors of the stories which went on to
become some of the most memorable movies ever made - Casablanca, Schindler's list, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...
Once, when I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, I tried to watch a DVD, borrowed from Chicago Public Library. The movie was horrible with
terrifying, clueless acting and no perceivable storyline and I got so
frustrated that I simply had to start writing this blog.
You see... I said 'no perceivable
storyline' ... I would surely be damned to say that! Without weaving a
complex lingual web of reasoning and logic and argumentative phrases,
let me cut to the cheese ...
The movie was 'A Tale of Two Cities'. Author - Charles Dickens. No storyline, huh?
"Great literature to great films" - is the concept fundamentally flawed? Are the 'so called' cinematic elements, get completely overlooked by the writers when they create a masterpiece? Or, do the directors and screenplay writers get so much bogged down by the thematic grandeur and imagery of a great novella, that they cannot pour down the creative juice from the cup of a great literature to the plate of the celluloid? I looked upon the list of American Film Institute's (AFI) "100 years - 100 movies", arguably the most critically acclaimed movies of 20th century and could find sparse instances of great literature transformed into great feature films. The general trend is that great movies are based on adapted screenplay from often obscure short stories or novella and not from hugely popular epic stories from renowned authors. There are exceptions, of course - Margaret Michelle's most loved epic (one of my personal favorites) also became Hollywood's one of the most enduring and time-tested blockbusters ' Gone with the Wind'. The Wizard of Oz has its own special place in the heart of millions of American children as well as a spot in the top ten of AFI's list. Lord of the Rings is again a great novel translated into an epic film. But, they remain that - exceptions.On the other hand, surprisingly, I can keep on recounting list of authors whose name you may have never heard but have watched the movies based on their stories multiple times and loved them too. We talked about some of them in the beginning of this discussion. I'll cite one more example.
What does the name Stephen King bring to your mind when you hear it first? Let me help you with the first sentence of Wikipedia article on him: "Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy." Agreed? Now, it turns out that this guy also wrote a small collection of novella called "Different Seasons" in 1982. One of the 4 stories from that book was adapted into a movie in 1994. The book was never a bestseller like King's other creations. What about the movie? Well... it did not win a single Academy award or Golden Globe (although it was nominated in multiple categories). But, in the heart of film critics and movie lovers alike, it is placed as one of the best humane dramas ever portrayed on the silver screen - an uplifting, realistic, and heart-warming tale of sacrifice and determination in pursuit of freedom and liberty. The story name was "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" :)
But, what could be the reason?
The
slow-cooking, the simmering of plots, thoughts, images, actions in the
cauldron of a story that is tremendously hard to condense in a 120
minutes time span?
Or, the apparent lack of extreme
intimacy that we develop with each character (or even with inanimate
object) in a book which, for some reasons, cannot be in general
re-created on silver screen?
One prominent example of the
first kind is Da Vinci Code,
where the primary thrill of the story lies in the process of its gradual
building. The essential kicks of a Dan Brown thriller are the one
liners at the end of a long paragraph. Alas.. there were no such
punchline moments in the movie. The 32 frames a minute rate might simply
not be a suitable medium to capture the 'flash-think-crush-jark-crack' kind of feeling when you turn the leaves.
Good
example for the second kind could be Harry Potter series. The kind of
attachment that we felt with the green-eyed, ruffled-haired, eleven year
old boy living in a dingy cupboard under the staircase could not be
recreated on the screen. There were too many distractions. Think about
the beginning of the first movie "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"
and the opening paragraphs of the same book. There were severe
distractions in the movie - strange looking Dumbledore putting out the
street lights, grayish cat turning into Minerva McGonagall,
harsh-sounding Hagrid crash landing on a flying motorcycle... the small
'boy who lived' was a secondary object in these magical hulabulaboo...
They were good ways to introduce viewers into the world of magic, but utterly
ineffective when it comes to building that special relationship with the
main protagonist of the story. I distinctly remember the feeling I had
first time I read these ending lines of the first chapter - "... He
couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all
over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed
voices: “To Harry Potter — the boy who lived" - the feeling of
holding up a glass of wine myself, not exactly sure why ... but to
celebrate the beginning of a new life, in that somewhat tepid
anticipation of beginning of a fresh chapter in the travelogue of a
journey unknown. Tell me honestly, did you feel the same way at the end
of the first sequence of the movie? I bet not.
Or simply - are the two mediums fundamentally different? The quintessential 'cinematic' experience is something only confined within the lengths of few frames of celluloid (or CMOS image sensor in today's digital arena for that matter) whereas the charm of a great story is spread thinner over the expanse of pages, the whole experience not to be 'viewed' but 'absorbed' slowly? Is it like that 'impedance matching theorem' studied in Electrical engineering curricula, where the power of one system cannot be effectively transferred to another unless their internal dynamics (or impedance) are closely matched.
This next example could be limited in its effectiveness because it involves a so-called non-English 'World Cinema'. But it is close to my heart and I need to cite it. Consider the case of 'Pather Panchali', the great masterpiece of acclaimed Indian director Satyajit Ray - one of the best human dramas of all time. The frames of the movie are 'un-put-downable' but they are visual frames nonetheless - they dazzle your consciousness, uplifts your soul. In the train sequence, you have a perspective vision of Apu (the 10 year old main protagonist) and the vanishing train in the distant horizon beckoning Apu towards an infinite life journey - a symbolism of highest caliber portrayed on the silver screen, and perhaps your heart aches for Durga (Apu's elder sister) who cannot be seen in that very frame - the symbolic verdict of her limited life span. It's a class act from the maestro.
But when you read Bibhutibhusan Bandopadhay's original novel, you realize there is no 'frame', only the journey.
When you read the book, you don't ' experience any 'third person perspective vision', you become Apu. Untouched by the bone-crushing, putrid poverty and life struggle around, you just sense the ethereal beauty of an insignificant flower, you smell the burnt soil and grass, you absorb the sunshine, the God of eternal journey writes the travelogue for you - you the reader.
They were a great book and a great movie who shared their names. But they also did not share a lot of things. They could not, ever, perhaps. There was another great novel of same degree of artistry from this author - 'Aronyok' was never attempted to be adapted for a movie. Understandably so.
So, is
the situation utterly hopeless? Can we expect a movie to surpass
the charm of the very book that it is based on? I think it is possible. I have great hope.
I looked at all the academy awards from 1970 and listed best film, adapted screenplay, and original screenplay awardee for each year. Here is the list...
Yellow highlight to signify that for that year the best movie and the best adapted screenplay are same, blue highlight signifies the best film and the original screenplay award winner was the same. First observation is that, in most years, either the original or adapted screenplay winners also took home the best film award. No surprise there. Among them, it is the adapted screenplay-best film combo which scores majority over the original screenplay combination. So this shows (at least from a very 'Hollywood-is-tic' point of view) that there is a high degree of correlation between a screenplay adopted from a good story and a corresponding cinema of excellence. If a good book can do it, so can a great one :)
I looked at all the academy awards from 1970 and listed best film, adapted screenplay, and original screenplay awardee for each year. Here is the list...
Perhaps, we have to let go the familiar notion of incessant cycle of
story telling in the movie and work more on relationship building.
Perhaps the visual and acoustic elements of the movie have to be
developed more poignant, more interspersed. Silence needs to be used more
often in the thematic building of a situation - to allow for the
simmering thoughts to settle in. Perhaps we need more of...
One liners...
Full stops and semicolons...
Odors and sunshine sipping through...
