പുസ്തകമാണോ സിനിമയാണോ മികച്ചത്? ഈ ചോദ്യം ചോദിക്കുന്നത് എന്തിനാണ് അർത്ഥശൂന്യമെന്ന് ലൂയിസ് വിൽഡർ പറയുന്നു

The last few years have seen a number of high-profile book-to-film adaptations. From Wuthering Heights to Dune, from Frankenstein to Hamnet, all have been praised and panned. On the anvil are Klara and the Sun, Sunrise on the Reaping, and a new TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, to name a few.

The release of each one raises the same question: was the book better? Film and print are, of course, different mediums, and adaptations have to walk a fine line. This is the subject of Louise Willder’s entertaining and informative new book, The Book Was Better. Despite the title, she also includes films that live up to, and in some cases surpass, the book.

Her book is a comprehensive survey as well as a personal tour of likes and dislikes. Willder’s starting point is that books and films are barely comparable: “apples and giraffes”, in novelist Dennis Lehane’s phrase. Reading can be an act of creation in itself, which is why we feel such ownership over our favourites, and adaptations provoke dismay and even outrage.

Movies that got it wrong

The book begins with examples of movies that got it wrong. She is wincing, for example, about the 2022 adaptation of Persuasion, which she describes as a step-by-step guide to how not to adapt a classic. When it comes to children’s books, she feels betrayed by the 2007 film of The Dark is Rising, which turned the pagan roots of Susan Cooper’s book into a generic fantasy quest.

The urge to sanitise is another trap. The Color Purple was hugely successful, but with a cartoonish look that author Alice Walker herself disliked. Even well-loved adaptations can stumble: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings gets almost everything right, says Willder, but she can’t overlook the deletion of the “Scouring of the Shire”.

And those that were successful

Moving on to movies that were more successful adaptations, her stance is counterintuitive: fidelity is overrated. Her prime exhibit is Children of Men, a film that went beyond PD James’s novel to become something new. It is, she says, a “faithless, impure lover”, and with adaptations, those are often the best kind. She includes David Hare’s observation that true fidelity requires “lavish promiscuity”, and William Goldman’s test for adapters: what must we cling to? His answer: an emotional connection.

That is also why Willder finds the careful screen versions of The Road and High-Rise stylish but bloodless. Netflix’s recent Ripley, faithful to Patricia Highsmith’s novel, becomes, on screen, tedious. Willder quotes William Boyd, who argues that the only question is how something will work best as a film. You can honour a book’s spirit without copying its surface.

Films that bettered books

Examples of cases when the film was better than the book? Clearly, The Godfather, The Exorcist, and Jaws. Jaws, she declares, is Steven Spielberg’s best film. Short stories, meanwhile, can make for ideal source material (as Satyajit Ray was well aware), because of a focused narrative and room for cinematic expansion.

Many who claim that books are better lean on the argument that films can’t capture inner lives. Willder takes issue with this, quoting film theorist Linda Hutcheon, who points out techniques such as the close-up, lighting, sound, and mise-en-scène. Willder’s examples: A Room with a View and The Innocents.

How do writers react to adaptations of their work? John le Carré likened a film of a book to oxen turned into bouillon cubes; PL Travers wept at the premiere of Mary Poppins; Vladimir Nabokov wanted only “hard currency”. Against these are others like Thomas Harris, who compares selling film rights to selling a house, after which you can’t complain about the new kitchen. Hilary Mantel and Kazuo Ishiguro are more generous, seeing adaptation as a chance for a story to grow.

No such thing as 'unfilmable' novel?

Finally, Willder asks, “What the hell were they thinking?” Silly books like The Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey, she notes, produce silly films. Some of her sharpest barbs are aimed at “disasters” such as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula and The Scarlet Letter. She is sceptical of the idea of the “unfilmable” novel, siding with Stanley Kubrick that if it can be written, it can be filmed (though The Great Gatsby remains a stubborn test case).

Ultimately, asking if the book was better is the wrong question. The best adaptations take what Hossein Amini calls the “first, unique, individual reading experience”, and then leave it behind to follow new trails. It’s a useful test for the adaptations to come.