“Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction, because it is already there.”—JG Ballard Adaptations are perhaps congenitally bound to disappoint, if only because there arguably cannot be two imaginations that are exactly alike. While the reader’s visualization of a novel tends to be subjectively expressionistic, driven as it is by the “mood” of the text rather than its descriptive qualities (however detailed they may be), cinema can hardly escape its literalizing and collectively mediated nature. Whose version of the book are we really experiencing when watching an adaptation for the big screen? Does comparing the finished cinematic product with its literary source material make any creative sense?
Whatever the answer, as far as this piece of…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 85 - Winter 2021