Last week, I saw the film ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’. My verdict? It was good but not as good as the book.
That got me thinking: as a book lover, do I consider many films ‘as good as the book’? And when I do, what’s made it work?
In the spirit of one of my favourites, here are five of my top book-to-film adaptations:
1. ‘High Fidelity’ (book by Nick Hornby)
When it was announced that ‘High Fidelity’ was being made into a film, fans were in uproar because the story was being relocated from London to Chicago and they feared it would be Americanised. But as The New York Times review noted, the film was ‘exquisitely fine tuned’ and adopted the book’s ‘dry self-deflating humour’. The casting of John Cusack and Jack Black was beyond perfect. Nick Hornby himself was thrilled with the film and said he never expected it to be such a faithful interpretation of the book.
2. ‘Notes on a Scandal’ (book by Zoe Heller)
Zoe Heller co-wrote the screenplay which may explain why the tone is so consistent between book and film. The book is a thriller but it also has a bitter black wit that the movie captures flawlessly. The film uses voiceover to imitate the narration of the book. Judi Dench as the manipulative spinster Barbara Covett was an inspired choice.
3. ‘Fight Club’ (book by Chuck Palahniuk)
* spoiler alert *
I’m going to break the first rule of ‘Fight Club’ by talking about it. The book threw up very challenging material because one of the major characters turns out to be a figment of the other character’s imagination. Yet the creative direction, cinematography and editing – plus a clever script – make it work. The visual look of the film skilfully mimics the book’s edgy, dangerous vibe. Edward Norton is always fantastic and although I’m no Brad Pitt fan, he IS Tyler Durden. Chuck Palahniuk has reportedly said he believes the film improves on his novel.
4. ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ (book by Ken Kesey)
The film swept the 1975 Oscars and it is unimaginable that anybody but Jack Nicholson could have played Randall McMurphy. Yet Kesey was reportedly unhappy with the casting (he wanted Gene Hackman). There’s a huge amount of internet gossip about Kesey’s negative attitude to the film and it’s hard to tell what’s true or not. Chuck Palahniuk has written that Ken Kesey told him he didn’t like the film and the Internet Movie Database claims that Kesey never watched it because he was furious the story wasn’t told from Chief Bromden’s perspective (as it is in the novel). As a reader, I thought Nicholson and Louise Fletcher captured McMurphy and Nurse Ratched exactly as I’d imagined them.
5. ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (book by Thomas Harris)
The book was an enjoyable non-taxing holiday read. But the film was fantastic, thanks almost entirely to Anthony Hopkins who’s only on screen for around twenty minutes but utterly dominates with his chilling presence. In Russell Brand’s recent memoir, ‘My Booky Wook’, he claims that Hopkins based his characterisation on a teacher they both had at drama school. Hopkins himself has said in interviews that he studied many people for the role, including videos of Charles Manson.
So is there anything those five successful adaptations have in common?
No film can ever hope to be as nuanced or detailed as the book from which it comes. But I think in each of those five cases, the film has captured the spirit and tone of the book.
The filmmakers successfully identified the lines, characters and events at the book’s heart and kept those while trimming the rest.
There was nothing in those films that violated the way my imagination had interpreted the book. If anything, they enriched my literary memory.
The other commonality is obviously great casting. In each of my examples, the main actors are so ‘right’ that it’s now impossible to read the book and not visualise the film character.
Casting can be extremely controversial for famous books. Anne Rice was outraged when Tom Cruise was cast as the Vampire Lestat in the film version of her book ‘Interview with the Vampire’ (she retracted her criticism by taking out in advertisement in Variety after seeing the film).
If authors can be upset, so too can fans. I recently avoided seeing ‘Disgrace’ (despite loving the book by J.M. Coetzee) because I was put off by the casting of John Malkovich in the central role. I think Malkovich is brilliant but I’d imagined David Lurie very differently physically and so I was turned off going to the movie.
Obviously, there are many great adaptations that I’ve not mentioned so please throw in your two cents worth in the comments section.
And before somebody writes in to berate me for leaving out ‘Lord of the Rings’ … yes, I acknowledge that it’s a very fine adaptation but I must confess to being neither a fan of the books nor the films.
Here are this fortnight’s ten interesting things to read, watch or listen to:
The Guardian’s take on the top 50 book-to-film adaptations.
Neither P.D. James nor Ruth Rendell like the television adaptations of their books.
I’ve never read a more scathing review of a film star than this David Denby assessment of Ben Stiller. Part of the reason it makes me squirm is that although I like Stiller, there’s a lot of truth in it. The Denby review so infuriated Stiller’s good friend (and occasional co-star) Owen Wilson that he wrote a letter to the New Yorker in response.
Has Jack Nicholson ever not been the coolest person in Hollywood? Here he is getting his Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975
Hollywood is reeling from a summer of flops.
One of my favourite Australian journalists, George Megalogenis, writes about a renaissance in political books in the Australian Literary Review.
In honour of Myf Warhurst’s excellent debut column in The Age, I’m calling my ipod Myf because it’s entertaining, cute and it knows a lot of songs.
I think we all need a decline letter like Edmund Wilson.
Do you remember when we used shut somebody up by saying ‘too much information’? The Times asks if we’re witnessing the death of discretion.
I wish I had the guts to send this link to serial email offenders.
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