The Book's Always Better Than The Movie. Really?

A few weeks ago, I finished Jonathan Safran Foer's novel 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' which I rushed in order to ensure I completed it before the movie came out to ensure that the experiences didn't weirdly overlap. There are plenty of novels I've read after watching the movie and it's been no big deal, but I tend to prefer reading the novel first in order to avoid visualising the cast as the characters. As an aside I loved the novel, although I suspect it's not everyone's cup of tea, as well as quite liking the movie, even though it's far from the director's best (that would be 'The Hours' by a long shot). The whole experience got me to thinking how annoying I find it when I hear people complaining "the book's better than the movie" and not just because they probably mean that "the novel's better than the movie". As a further digression, a former English teacher of mine is now very happy as a resulting of me making that point. Or just not turning in his grave. Or possibly dribbling in a home somewhere and not caring either way. People confusing the book ("the physical form") and the art ("the novel") drove him spare. In fact, do you think he saw ebooks coming? Damn, that was one clever bloke. Anyway.

The obvious flaw in the comparison is of course how much it disrespects the process of adaptation as well as being deeply unfair thanks to basic differences in form. Characters' inner monologues? Not so easy to put on screen (although the recent adaptation of 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' did a fabulous job thanks to Tilda Swinton's astonishing performance). Carl Sagan's 'Contact' (which I read after I'd seen the movie) lost the crux of the personal story, which came to fruition in the last few pages and which I'm not going to spoil here, as the entire sub-plot had been excised from the movie. And yet when I thought back to the movie, I could see that there was no way to ladle it in, that the excision was entirely sensible and just what a good adaptation job had been done. The novel of 'The Last Temptation of Christ' was a densely textured, earthy, philosophical masterpiece. Martin Scorsese's movie was no less earthy and indeed no less philosophical, but the tonality & intricacy of the prose just couldn't be translated. Did the movie feel as though it was lacking anything? Not so much.

'We Need To Talk About Kevin' was a good example of one of the fundamental rules of adaptation: not being overly faithful to any particular literary conceit if it acts as too much of a constraint on the movie. In that case, the film dumped the Choderlos de Laclos-style series of letters/ interior ruminations for something that superficially felt much more conventional and yet with a slight sense of subterfuge managed to include everything that was key with attentive, subtle direction and lovely performances. An almost but not quite opposite example of this was the film of 'One Day' which insisted on keeping the basic format of the same calendar date on successive years; the problem with this was that there was so much story to get through and so little time for character detail that the actually-not-that-bad movie felt like it was hurriedly ticking boxes, rather than say skipping alternate years and giving what remained more room to breathe.

But the comparison between novel & movie is best tested with three particular examples. 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was (imho) one of Dick's weakest novels, adding virtually nothing to his oeuvre. 'Jaws' read like a typical airport blockbuster (does anyone write novels like that any more, because they're not available in any airport I've travelled through recently?) while 'The Godfather' read like lurid pulp trash. (Sonny's manhood was so large that prostitutes used to charge him double, explaining his particular attraction to the woman he ended up with as she had a particular health issue allowing her to, um, accommodate him. No, I'm not making this up; strange how this detail didn't quite make it to the movie.) And yet Ridley Scott's movie invented an entire visual aesthetic as well as forming the basis for modern cyberpunk, Spielberg's movie is still regarded as a masterpiece thriller and Coppola's movie presented a gangster epic in the style of an opera and is still regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made. That's the ultimate problem with the idea that the movie's not as good as the novel; it's just not necessarily true.

Digital Cinema Re-Releases

In I think the penultimate chapter of Mark Cousins' otherwise excellent thirteen part documentary 'The Story of Film: An Odyssey', the author became enamoured with the word 'digital' and started liberally applying it pretty much everywhere. And I became really, really confused (surely the opposite of the intended result?). CG effects have really taken off in the last 30 years, but computers themselves have been used in/ for effects for even longer than that. Shooting digitally has only become commonplace in the last five years or so. Laserdiscs and DVDs both date from the 90s. And digital projection has only really been around for the last decade. Unless I'm missing something, the links between many of those actual, individual technologies is tenuous at best - the only common thing I can think of is, um, movies.

Although different aspects of this (as a whole) technological revolution are of course other blog posts, this one - almost, but not quite contradicting what I wrote above - is about a weird result from the confluence between home video and digital projection and that would be blu-ray. A little like the way longstanding TV sets like 'Eastenders' (as opposed to longstanding TV sets such as the one probably in your living room) had to be spruced up for HD owing to the broadcast quality showing up previously undetectable flaws, blu-ray releases have necessitated a lot of film restoration. One of the best examples of this is the canon of 22 Bond movies (yes I know that the producers have obtained the rights to 'Never Say Never Again' and the first film adaptation of 'Casino Royale', but let's be honest: they're always going to be treated like unwanted stepchildren and no, I wasn't looking for an excuse to mention Bond films). Home video sets of the series through the years have sold truckloads in those we-didn't-know-what-to-get-you-for-Christmas-but-you-love-Bond-movies-right?/ another-version?-I-have-to-have-it! kinds of way and the producers and studio make quite a lot from the back catalogue every year as a result. As a result, the advent of blu-ray led to the producers getting the back catalogue restored in very, very high-def (8k for technical geeks) by the outfit formerly known as Lowry Digital. This would ensure not only pristine blu-ray releases, but also awesome, whatever-comes-next releases too, whether that be another disc format, HD home streaming or even-more-'H'D home streaming. I'm leaving the subject of blu-ray transfers for another post, but - awesome side effect alert! - the producers actually ended up with digital prints that weren't just good enough for cinema release, but which probably look a whole lot better than any original release. As a result of this, the producers were able to do a limited series of cinema re-releases for some of the most popular Bond movies.

The Bond folks weren't the only ones who cottoned on to this of course and all kinds of movies are now getting short cinema re-releases. I'm saving the subject of 3D re-releasing for another post, but regular 2D re-releases include 'Jurassic Park', 'John Carpenter's The Thing', 'Ghostbusters', 'Back To The Future' (which was strangely UK-only) & 'Scarface'. I came thisclose to leaving 'Blade Runner' off the list, since it was the newly minted Ultimate Edition rather than the original theatrical cut, but since Ridley Scott was merely finishing it off rather than fundamentally changing it, it would be wrong to omit it.

So what did I learn apart from reiterating that the experience of watching in a film in a movie theatre (annoying patrons aside) really is nothing like watching it at home, no matter how good your home cinema set-up is? 'Scarface' is not actually a brilliant movie, but is still rollicking good entertainment. 'The Thing' is ruddy terrifying; you'd think a large screen and cleaned up picture might expose weaknesses in Rob Bottin's creature designs, but this didn't turn out to be the case at all. 'Blade Runner' is even more immersing than watching it at home; if you're lucky enough to have a well-designed auditorium, the opening sequence makes you feel like you're actually floating and you really get how cleverly the physical effects on the cityscape were designed to sell you that illusion and this film doesn't let up at all - it's just sheer genius throughout. 'Jurassic Park' hasn't aged well at all; while I loved the film on its original release and watched the video over and over again, seeing at the cinema with the benefit of age (but maybe not so much wisdom) made it feel like a series of not-that-well-strung-together set pieces and ultimately rather hollow.

'Back To The Future' and 'The Lion King' however - which we chose to watch in 2D - were particularly poignant. I was distracted by a slight, continuous noise during the wildebeest stampede in the latter, which of course ends up Simba's realisation that Mufasa has died; I'd figured that maybe one of the speakers was distorting from all the bass. Just as he crawls under his dad's paw, in absolute silence, the noise suddenly amplified into a now clearly identifiable child's wailing, who then screamed "Mummy! Make it stop!". It was simultaneously funny and incredibly moving, as I realised that in twenty or thirty years time that child would talk about this as a seminal moment, the same way people of my generation talk about feeling devastated when Bambi's mum got shot and that I'd been there to witness it; a seventeen year old movie reducing a new generation to tears. Although I cried plenty of times myself, but don't tell anyone.

'Back To The Future' was just as fun, albeit a slightly different experience. The movie itself hasn't dated a jot. It's just as endlessly quotable as ever. The actors all just get it and do their utmost to invest everything in their characters, all of whom are perfectly realised. The direction never flags, the script is just a sheer joy. The score felt vibrant and the whole film just came alive. The cinema was also full of families, which is something I usually dread thanks to parents who often don't give a monkey's what their kids are doing or what disruption they're wreaking on anyone else. And they were all absolutely silent. Not a peep. And I realised that when the movie really is that good - admittedly a rarity - that audiences will of course behave themselves. Two things occurred to me: the first was how cool it had been to watch the movie with other people who'd grown up with it and who were now presumably recreating that experience with their own children. The second was about the movie itself. 'Back To The Future' was of course made for family audiences, but it has charm, characters and edge. Would anyone make a movie with the line "Great Scott! The Libyans!" now? I don't think so. Would anyone make a film now where the (er) teenage hero's best friend is the crazy, old, single guy who lives as a recluse on the other side of town? That would be 'no'. Is anyone going to talk with reverence and love for any of the Transformers movies in quarter of a century's time the way that people like me can talk about 'Back To The Future' now (yes, it'll be twenty-seven this year). That would also be 'no'. I shouldn't pick on Transformers movies (the problem is that it's just too much fun) and I actually don't have to: there's plenty of vacuous, utterly disposable entertainment out there. Pick a big, recent popcorn movie or series (e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean) and ask yourselves if anyone's going to love them in twenty-five years. Is anyone actually going to remember them in twenty-five years? Just because something's made for a mainstream audience or a family audience doesn't mean that it can skimp on fun, exuberance, entertainment value, great characterisation or any of the other hallmarks of great movies. The second thing I learnt from seeing 'Back To The Future' at the cinema was that the greatest gift of digital cinema re-releases is that we can find those qualities in mainstream films at the cinema again, albeit in movies that we already know and love.

Directors' Late Periods

Many creative people often follow artistic trajectories similar to three-act/ narrative arc structures so fondly promoted in scriptwriting seminars & (after being dumbed down) prevalent in stereotypical, mainstream Hollywood movies. So it is that many directors nearer the end of their film making lives than their start are often portrayed as being in a creative decline. The careers of three of the great so-called movie brats of the 70s provide interesting & contrasting examples of what later artistic endeavours can look like.

Steven Spielberg is widely revered as a film making genius, one of the few directors alive or dead whose name is known by pretty much all cinema-going audiences. His grip on the popular imagination with movies such as 'Jaws', 'Close Encounters of The Third Kind', 'E.T.', 'Jurassic Park' and the Indiana Jones movies - which between them pretty much defined the blockbuster era - is extraordinary. He has his critics of course, people who accuse him of being overly-sentimental or pandering to cheap populism, criticisms that I personally think have some basis in truth but perhaps ignore the greater marvel of being able to spin a fairytale like 'E.T.' and have as many people emotionally engage with it as they do. He's also long evinced a desire to be taken seriously, starting with 'The Color Purple' (sic) and leading to awards recognition for 'Schindler's List', a film that I think is certainly extraordinary in parts but which is ruined by the, um, overly-sentimental ending. In the first half of the last decade, Spielberg experimented with darker material than previously, leading to the posthumous Kubrick "collaboration" 'A.I.' (one of my favourites) and 'Munich' (a gripping meditation on morality, violence and retribution that's still my favourite Spielberg movie). Since then however he's made a fourth Indiana Jones (which felt like a joyless, almost unwatchable, cheap retread of the iconic original trilogy) and 'The Adventures of Tintin', which is entertaining, forgettable and which owes much of its worth to, well, Indiana Jones. Yesterday, while watching 'War Horse', I found myself looking at my watch every thirty seconds or so in the first quarter of an hour. The first three quarters of an hour - until the first sequence in WW1 - felt interminable and I sat wondering about leaving and maybe coming home and reading the paper. The sequences in the war itself were superb (shades of 'Saving Private Ryan' here) but the interstitial scenes felt completely contrived and lacked any resonance; the film as a whole felt like a Spielberg knock-off made by a jobbing hack (as opposed to the fantastic homage 'Super 8' made by superstar-in-the-making J. J. Abrams). The ending was moving, but - despite being moved - I found it ridiculously treacly. The most curious thing about the movie was its ability to waste extraordinary actors (Liam Cunningham, Eddie Marsan, Benedict Cumberbatch) in what were virtually bit parts, but Spielberg's name is obviously such as a draw that he can understandably work with anyone he likes. I'm not stupid enough to think that Steven Spielberg's not going to make another classic at some point, but his recent run of form does indicate a serious late form decline similar to Woody Allen's and perhaps one to be likewise punctuated with just the odd flash of the old magic.

Born of the crumbling studio system, with an encyclopedic knowledge & love of movie history and cementing his position as one of the first modern American auteur directors, Martin Scorsese exploded into the film world in a big way starting in the '70s with 'Mean Streets', 'Taxi Driver' followed later by 'Raging Bull' and 'Goodfellas'. Has age mellowed him? I don't really doubt it. But whereas many deride 'The Age of Innocence' as a pseudo 'classic', Spielbergian-style shot at Oscar glory, each one of the six times I saw it at the cinema, I watched a gorgeous movie about tribalism that reinvigorated the costume drama while retaining its directors familiar obsessions with people trying to find happiness while trying to conform to society and its expectations. A late, similarly criticised movie was 'The Aviator', which is still my favourite Scorsese picture; it's a beautiful story of ambition, iconoclasm and the price of success - I cried the second time I watched it during the H1 test flight because I'd never seen editing or storytelling anything like it. Scorsese of course did eventually win his Oscar, for 'The Departed', which to my mind was fantastic film making, but relatively minor Scorsese. Do any of these films have the invention, youthful exuberance or vigour of his seminal works from the '70s? No, not really, but what they do have is a craftsmanship that only a filmmaker with experience, wisdom and true mastery of his gift can muster. I personally found 'Hugo' frighteningly dull, but I'm gratified by the warm reception it seems to have received from everyone else who's seen it; Scorsese still has many, many movies on his slate and clearly isn't frightened of adding new tools to his formidable arsenal.

Francis Ford Coppola will of course be forever associated with the Godfather movies and 'Apocalypse Now', possibly the ultimate statement in movie making ambition. The 70s is also his most famous decade, pretty much bookended by those movies, with the Palme D'Or-winning modern classic 'The Conversation' released between Godfathers almost as a light relief, side project and his mentoring of George Lucas resulting in the latter's 'THX-1138' and 'American Graffiti'. The 80s saw Coppola trying unsuccessfully - mainly as a result of the commercial failure of 'One From The Heart' - to wrestle control of his career from studio interference and set up independently, eventually resulting in the where-have-I-heard-that-before 'Tucker: The Man and His Dreams', a biography of a dreamer trying to set up his (car) business in the face of well-funded establishment opposition. The 90s saw Coppola reduced to a director-for-hire on such movies as 'Jack' and 'The Rainmaker', which - while moderately entertaining- is still a John Grisham adaptation. Perhaps inspired by his daughter's burgeoning film career (which in itself seemed to ape the elder Coppola's need to take care to avoid entanglements with major studios) Francis Ford Coppola seems to have reinvented himself as the ultimate independent. Having not seen it, I can't comment on 'Youth Without Youth' but 'Tetro' felt like a film made by a director a third of his age (meant in a good way) and yet was a movie that had artistry, ambition, fearlessness and energy to spare, showing a vitality not seen since 'The Conversation' in 1974. And in his 70s, Coppola seems to have found himself in the middle of a creative renaissance. In some ways, he offers the most positive example of the creative liberation possible for an artist in their later years.

Movies About Movies

A rather mundane explanation for set dressing in the 'The Artist' that was so simple that the sets themselves became recognisable from other movies would of course be budget constraints. I personally prefer the notion (which may indeed be true) that this was an intentional stylistic choice, designed to emphasise just how much the movie was honouring its progenitors by aping the results of their often rapid production schedules. Apart from being a sweet update (if that's the word) of 'A Star Is Born', 'The Artist' was many, many things: a celebration of black and white, silent movies and other classic characteristics, a comment on the march of progress & technology, a love letter to the melodramas of the time in which it's set. The film wasn't just a paean to movie-making, but to the power and joy of movies themselves. Twenty-one years ago (really?!) 'Cinema Paradiso' did something similar, contextualising the love and magic of movies in a story about growing up and how our relationships change over time. Bernardo Bertolucci's late masterpiece (imo) 'The Dreamers' excerpted moments from the movies it celebrated immediately after its own characters had recreated them for their own amusement.

Martin Scorsese often shows love for classics in his movies. 'The Age Of Innocence' featured a tracking shot of a painting that served to draw attention to the fact that it was his first film shot in 'scope. I found 'Hugo' pretty dull, but even I could see it suddenly coming to life in its reminiscence of George Méliès. 'Shutter Island' owed more than a little to '50s movies by Robert Aldrich & Stanley Kubrick. 'The Aviator' featured a gorgeous visual conceit whereby each sequence was shot and processed to look like film from the particular time in which it was set, which was why its cinematography changed so much over its running time.

But there's another category of movie that celebrates the power and possibilities of movies in a slightly different way. 'Peeping Tom' was initially reviled for making viewers complicit in the murders being carried out and as a result pretty much ended director Michael Powell's career. 'Strange Days' pastiched this, freely confusing the audiences' experiences with those of the characters, prying us out of our objectivity and immersing us in the world of the movie. 'Atonement' fantastically recreated the turn at the finale of the novel, treating everything beforehand as semi-fictionalised artifice within the context of a greater story that we'd been watching without quite realising. In modern times however, it's Michael Haneke who has done most with this form of self-referential storytelling; with 'Cache' he made us look at and consider the actual act of watching and turned this into a comment on voyeurism. While in the thematically-related 'Funny Games' (both times!) not only did he leave much of the violence intentionally off-screen, forcing us to imagine what was going on, but at one point he allowed one of his characters to break the fourth wall, rewind a few moments and amend the progression of the story, apparently to play with us.

What all of these examples have in common of course is their play with the form. But not only do films like this show their devotion and affection for movies, but for me they inspire me to appreciate the possibilites of cinema just that little bit more.