CINEMANIC: Story Time--The Trip From Text to Screen

Can a film truly do justice to a literary work? It's a question almost as old as film itself, since the cinema started borrowing from literature nearly right from its onset. The modern debate often dwindles to a simple "The book was better!" or "I hated the book but I loved the movie!" Films based on novels are so entrenched in popular culture that the original literature is often left behind when the film is discussed, with perhaps a passing reference to the director or an actor that captures a certain feel or mood of the work.

However, there do seem to be some consistent problems in making novel-based films. Often when adapting a novel to film, sacrifices must be made in plot, character and, to some degree, style. Most novels are simply too long or too complex to be satisfactorily encompassed by a two, or perhaps three-hour film (even a single Shakespearean play, such as Hamlet, can last up to four hours in its entirety).

Sometimes the novel is overwritten enough that, when chopped into its composite elements, it makes for an enjoyable film that remains somewhat true to the book's original plot, as witnessed in the critically acclaimed L.A. Confidential. Occasionally, despite a terrible novel, a masterful director can be successfully reworked into a great movie, such as the aquatic thriller Jaws. But usually, a great work of literature finds itself dismembered and crammed into a limited space of two hours. While they can still be great movies, and even capture the true spirit of the works they are based on, the audience--if they are familiar with the book--is inevitably left wanting more.

However, short stories seem to translate well to film, sometimes becoming something even better than the original work. Where a novel must be condensed, short stories must be expanded, gaining a more complex plot, more characters and more detail. Also, most short stories develop an overarching theme rather than character, so the film version can spend more time on the development of these characters.

Disney animated films are the best example of this. Disney takes short fairy tales and imbues them with character, lengthens the plot and often makes it more complex, and (unfortunately) inserts a happy ending every time. (It's only in the last decade that Disney has begun to attempt adapting novels, with varied results.) Some other examples of short tales being made into good, or at least successful, films include 2001: A Space Odyssey (expanded after the film's production into a whole novel) and The Lawnmower Man. John Campbell's short sci-fi story The Thing spawned a classic 1950s black-and-white horror film as well as an excellent John Carpenter gore flick in the '80s.

Coming out next month will be a major new example of the expanded short story: Sleepy Hollow. Already, director Tim Burton has distanced himself from the classic short story by Washington Irving--Irving's work was titled "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The plot is drastically different. In the tale, immortalized in a short Disney cartoon, Ichabod Crane is a thin, lanky schoolteacher with romantic designs on a local landowner's daughter, Katrina Van Tassel. In Crane's way is Brom Van Brunt, a big lug who frightens Crane with a story about the Headless Horseman--a rumored supernatural denizen known for his penchant for swiping the heads of the locals. Crane has an encounter with this spirit at the end of the story, but the narrator makes it seem very likely that the whole thing was just a gag by Van Brunt that worked a little too well.

Burton's film, however, gleefully embraces the existence of the Horseman; the trailer begins with the decapitated equestrian removing 12 pounds of ugly fat from a local. Furthermore, Ichabod Crane is no longer a mild-mannered, homely schoolteacher but a snobby constable from New York City, played by Johnny Depp. Many new characters have been added, including several new supernatural denizens of the superstitious town. The result is what promises to be a dark, complex, and, as always with Burton, thoroughly weird and wonderful film, a cross between Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas, with just a hint of Friday the 13th thrown in for good measure.

But looking ahead to next year, the big news in the literature-to-film-genre will be the movie translation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which began filming last month. Spread out over more than a thousand pages in three volumes, the book is notoriously difficult to film, the last attempt being Ralph Bakshi's horrid 1978 cartoon. How will director Peter Jackson satisfy the book's millions of fans? The fact is, he won't. But perhaps he can at least satisfy himself, and give the world an excellent version of one person's view of Middle-Earth; and that's really all one can ask for.

However, there do seem to be some consistent problems in making novel-based films. Often when adapting a novel to film, sacrifices must be made in plot, character and, to some degree, style. Most novels are simply too long or too complex to be satisfactorily encompassed by a two, or perhaps three-hour film (even a single Shakespearean play, such as Hamlet, can last up to four hours in its entirety).

Sometimes the novel is overwritten enough that, when chopped into its composite elements, it makes for an enjoyable film that remains somewhat true to the book's original plot, as witnessed in the critically acclaimed L.A. Confidential. Occasionally, despite a terrible novel, a masterful director can be successfully reworked into a great movie, such as the aquatic thriller Jaws. But usually, a great work of literature finds itself dismembered and crammed into a limited space of two hours. While they can still be great movies, and even capture the true spirit of the works they are based on, the audience--if they are familiar with the book--is inevitably left wanting more.

However, short stories seem to translate well to film, sometimes becoming something even better than the original work. Where a novel must be condensed, short stories must be expanded, gaining a more complex plot, more characters and more detail. Also, most short stories develop an overarching theme rather than character, so the film version can spend more time on the development of these characters.

Disney animated films are the best example of this. Disney takes short fairy tales and imbues them with character, lengthens the plot and often makes it more complex, and (unfortunately) inserts a happy ending every time. (It's only in the last decade that Disney has begun to attempt adapting novels, with varied results.) Some other examples of short tales being made into good, or at least successful, films include 2001: A Space Odyssey (expanded after the film's production into a whole novel) and The Lawnmower Man. John Campbell's short sci-fi story The Thing spawned a classic 1950s black-and-white horror film as well as an excellent John Carpenter gore flick in the '80s.

Coming out next month will be a major new example of the expanded short story: Sleepy Hollow. Already, director Tim Burton has distanced himself from the classic short story by Washington Irving--Irving's work was titled "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The plot is drastically different. In the tale, immortalized in a short Disney cartoon, Ichabod Crane is a thin, lanky schoolteacher with romantic designs on a local landowner's daughter, Katrina Van Tassel. In Crane's way is Brom Van Brunt, a big lug who frightens Crane with a story about the Headless Horseman--a rumored supernatural denizen known for his penchant for swiping the heads of the locals. Crane has an encounter with this spirit at the end of the story, but the narrator makes it seem very likely that the whole thing was just a gag by Van Brunt that worked a little too well.

Burton's film, however, gleefully embraces the existence of the Horseman; the trailer begins with the decapitated equestrian removing 12 pounds of ugly fat from a local. Furthermore, Ichabod Crane is no longer a mild-mannered, homely schoolteacher but a snobby constable from New York City, played by Johnny Depp. Many new characters have been added, including several new supernatural denizens of the superstitious town. The result is what promises to be a dark, complex, and, as always with Burton, thoroughly weird and wonderful film, a cross between Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas, with just a hint of Friday the 13th thrown in for good measure.

But looking ahead to next year, the big news in the literature-to-film-genre will be the movie translation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which began filming last month. Spread out over more than a thousand pages in three volumes, the book is notoriously difficult to film, the last attempt being Ralph Bakshi's horrid 1978 cartoon. How will director Peter Jackson satisfy the book's millions of fans? The fact is, he won't. But perhaps he can at least satisfy himself, and give the world an excellent version of one person's view of Middle-Earth; and that's really all one can ask for.