--- hell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bob wrote: > > > I don't know about 'COMPLETE justice', Hell, but > for me, "Being There" and > > "The Godfather" are the only two books that > immediately come to mind as > > having been made into films that are as good or > better than their sources. > > I seem to have started something here.....! > > Like I've just said in another post, I'm not in any > way saying the movies > made from book adaptations can't be as good or > better than the book. I'm > just asking for a movie that's the same as the book > it's based on!
I don't think it's possible. They are two completely different media. It's like reading a book in another language and then reading its translation into English. there are ways of saying things in one language that can't be translated literally into another. A good translator will create a different work altogether. This is especially true in poetry. Here's a line from a poem by Baudelaire, or Rimbaud (sorry, I cna't remember which) in its original French: "Les sanglots longs de violons de l'automne blessent mon coeur." The English translation of this could be: "The long sobs of autumn's violins wound my heart", which really doesn't do justice to the French. The French has all these long, sobbing "AN" & "ON" sounds (kind of like "Ahhh, ohh, ohh" said through your nose!) in "sanglots", "longs", "violons", followed by the somewhat violent-sounding "blessent" (pronounced "bless"), which interrupts all the sobbing and in this case *sounds* like it's striking a blow, followed by another "on" in "mon", then followed by "coeur" which is a bit harsh with its /k/ sound. Anyhoo, I'm being pedantic, but the point is, we have two completely different items just with two different languages. When you try to translate one medium into another (a book into a film, an illustration for a story, music into words), you're missing all the subtleties of the original. In addition, most film shows you everything - if you read a book, your mind supplies the details of how a character looks. I saw the film "The Colour (I suppose it's actually Color) Purple" and I loved it. THEN I read the book - and I loved it more. If I had read the book first, I might not have liked the movie as much, but then, we'll never know. I haven't seen the film yet (LOtR, that is) but I would like to. This may be one of those where I'll play hooky from work for a few hours and go to the afternoon matinee version because I'm not sure if my kids would be able to sit through anything that's more than 90 minutes. Please don't tell my boss - as far as she's concerned, I'm at a meeting, and it's not a lie - it's a meeting of souls, as it were! In fact, it has been so long since I've read these books that I've forgotten most of the details, so I wouldn't remember what is true or not true to the books - in this case, it sounds as if that might be a good thing. ______________________________________________________ Send your holiday cheer with http://greetings.yahoo.ca
