Pale Imitation
Cinema is its own art form. It has the power to combine audio and visual elements, epic scope and intimacy, emotion and storytelling. No piece of music can tell as complete a story, no painting can be as epic, no play can be as versatile, no book can be as sensual as a good film. And yet...Two recent films, each adapted from another medium, end up as pale shadows- sad imitations of their source material.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the first in the Potter series to be directed by a Brit, Mike Newell, manages to connect all of the dots from the book, while sucking out its soul. The plot points are there, but the whimsy is missing. Sure, each Potter book is darker than the last, but even so, there is a playfulness to them, a fun tone to the sober proceedings that Mr. Newell failed to capture. Perhaps if the movie had sacrificed a little literal fidelity for a better attempt at the book's tone (a la Prisoner of Azkaban), it would have been more enjoyable to me. Many critics and fans seem to like this installment better, but a Harry Potter world where Dumbledore gets so easily angered, there is no social commentary (S.P.E.W. anyone?), and everything from the maze to the goblet is so big, shiny and "Hollywoodized" is not the world for me.
Then the following weekend, we were given Rent. While Chris Columbus (incidentally the director of the first two Potter movies) was somewhat successful in bringing more visual detail and intimacy to this story of young New Yorkers and AIDS, he was much less successful in portraying the plays raw emotion. The music was sanitized for mediocrity, and some character elements were discarded- but possibly the most damaging omission was the replacement of some of the more dialogue-y songs with, well, dialogue. This may seem like a natural transition, but there's something about a simple line being sung ("I'm Angel" "An Angel... indeed" for instance) as opposed to being spoken that imbues the line with emotion and depth. I suppose the logic had something to do with just how much of the movie can be done in musical numbers. Apparently, it's okay if the characters only occasionally break into song- if it's too often it'll loose the audience...
Both of these movies do a great job of approximating their respective source material. If the source is a photograph, these movies are line drawings that give you the general idea without the detail, without the shading and color. A film adaptation of a book or a play, or a TV show for that matter, should be it's own thing. It should play to the strengths of the medium, and (if possible) transcend it's source. Is it possible, you may ask? I say it is: Hedwig and the Angry Inch went from one-man character sketch to punk-rock movie musical tour-de-fource, Adaptation. made a screenwriting murder mystery from a book about orchids, and the Lord of the Rings movies had a substantial challenge adapting some of the most beloved novels in all English literature, but pulled it off admirably. And that's just to name a few.
So don't let this fall's adaptation movies convince you that cinema cannot live up to the other arts. It can, and it still has a chance this winter- Narnia is a land that is just ripe for the big screen.
posted by Jeff @ 9:06 PM
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