Screenwriter of the Week- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Happy New Year!
I'm playing catch up a bit this week as the film I'm talking about was on last Sunday but, to be honest I'm not talking about it that much. I'm not a massive fan of the Harry Potter series in print or onscreen. Don't get me wrong, I think anything that gets children reading books bigger than the Bible is a good thing, I just don't understand why adults read them. None of which has much to do with this blog.
I've spent a lot of time talking about how directors tend to divert the attention from screenwriters but there is one group that does so to an even greater extent; original novelists. The Harry Potter films are not written by Steve Kloves, they're written by J K Rowling; Great Expectations will always be Dickens, Lord of the Rings is Tolkien etc etc. And to a degree that's pretty reasonable, it's the author not the screenwriter who came up with the story, the characters and their journey, and to an extent the structure, why should the screenwriter take a great share of the credit? Because it's hard. Adapting an existing novel is a very different skill to writing one from scratch, but it's no less difficult, it's just difficult in different ways.
The fact is that a novel needs to be cut down for the screen, but fans of that novel are the target audience and losing too much of what they loved about the book is fatal. Take Bram Stoker's Dracula, adapted by James Hart, the love story between Dracula and Mina is entirely invented, and wholly detrimental. On the other hand the film retains a chase scene across Europe from the book which is equally detrimental because a chase in which one of the protagonists is asleep on a boat throughout works in print but not on film. Most film buffswould agree that the best adaptation of the much-adapted Dracula is the silent Nosferatu, adapted by Henrik Galeen, in many ways it bears only a cursory similarity in plot terms but it captures the spirit of the original.
In my opinion, this is what makes a successful adaptation; being true to the spirit of the book. Great Expectations (adapted by David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan,Kay Walsh and Cecil McGivern) is considered one of the best ever adaptations of Dickens' work but the ending is completely different in the book. The Lord of the Rings is a pretty faithful adaptation (despite some bizarre additions) but to me (and I know I'm in a minority here) it fails to capture what made the book special.
How do you capture that spirit? Search me, it probably depends on the book. Another good recent example would be Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (adapted by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughn), an extremely complex story full of tension and suspense, and the solution to adapting it seems to have been to accept that if the audience is to understand all that is going on the characters would be talking constantly; so just accept the audience's ignorance and focus on the tension. And it worked brilliantly.
As I said, I'm not a big Potter fan but it seems to me that Steve Kloves (who adapted all but one of the books) has done a good job, if nothing else they are films that stand alone as films, dramatic and involving, and, crucially, never feeling like cut down books.
I'm playing catch up a bit this week as the film I'm talking about was on last Sunday but, to be honest I'm not talking about it that much. I'm not a massive fan of the Harry Potter series in print or onscreen. Don't get me wrong, I think anything that gets children reading books bigger than the Bible is a good thing, I just don't understand why adults read them. None of which has much to do with this blog.
I've spent a lot of time talking about how directors tend to divert the attention from screenwriters but there is one group that does so to an even greater extent; original novelists. The Harry Potter films are not written by Steve Kloves, they're written by J K Rowling; Great Expectations will always be Dickens, Lord of the Rings is Tolkien etc etc. And to a degree that's pretty reasonable, it's the author not the screenwriter who came up with the story, the characters and their journey, and to an extent the structure, why should the screenwriter take a great share of the credit? Because it's hard. Adapting an existing novel is a very different skill to writing one from scratch, but it's no less difficult, it's just difficult in different ways.
The fact is that a novel needs to be cut down for the screen, but fans of that novel are the target audience and losing too much of what they loved about the book is fatal. Take Bram Stoker's Dracula, adapted by James Hart, the love story between Dracula and Mina is entirely invented, and wholly detrimental. On the other hand the film retains a chase scene across Europe from the book which is equally detrimental because a chase in which one of the protagonists is asleep on a boat throughout works in print but not on film. Most film buffswould agree that the best adaptation of the much-adapted Dracula is the silent Nosferatu, adapted by Henrik Galeen, in many ways it bears only a cursory similarity in plot terms but it captures the spirit of the original.
In my opinion, this is what makes a successful adaptation; being true to the spirit of the book. Great Expectations (adapted by David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan,Kay Walsh and Cecil McGivern) is considered one of the best ever adaptations of Dickens' work but the ending is completely different in the book. The Lord of the Rings is a pretty faithful adaptation (despite some bizarre additions) but to me (and I know I'm in a minority here) it fails to capture what made the book special.
How do you capture that spirit? Search me, it probably depends on the book. Another good recent example would be Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (adapted by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughn), an extremely complex story full of tension and suspense, and the solution to adapting it seems to have been to accept that if the audience is to understand all that is going on the characters would be talking constantly; so just accept the audience's ignorance and focus on the tension. And it worked brilliantly.
As I said, I'm not a big Potter fan but it seems to me that Steve Kloves (who adapted all but one of the books) has done a good job, if nothing else they are films that stand alone as films, dramatic and involving, and, crucially, never feeling like cut down books.
Comments
Subscribe
Visitor counter
Blog Roll Centre
Blog Hints
2 Comments
The criticism which most of us usually hear is that the film isn't as good as the book. Like you say, how can 1 1/2 hours compare to a novel? If they do manage to pick out the essence without losing too much it can work really nicely, but it'll never compare to our own imaginations I believe.
One exception which I've only seen recently is 'The Lovely Bones' direted by Peter Jackson. I prefer the film to the book. The book is more a murder investigation, whereas the film is a lot more surreal and I really enjoyed it!
I suppose there's always exceptions and it takes a lot of skill to do a novel justice when producing it into a film.
Yes, it is an entirely different skill. I once tried to convert a short story (of my own) into a script, and failed miserably.
I find I tend to prefer most, whichever came first. i.e. is it the film of the book, or the book of the film?
Because of the differing lengths of each experience and wealth of info in a book that you don't have time for in a film, it's generally only short stories that can be adapted well, I think. Wasn't the excellent 'Don't Look Now' a Daphne de Maurier short story? And 'Brokeback Mountain' as a film I thought was fabulous. I'm about to read the short story (in a collection by Annie Proulx) so I shall be interested to see how they match up. It'll be difficult to top the film.
I agree with you about the LOTR films. The magic of the books withered on the screen for me - they were just too long, too faithful. I've heard good reports of the film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It's decades since I read the book.
And The Lovely Bones film sounds interesting, Minxie. Must say, I wasn't overly keen on the book in the first place.
Thought-provoking blog, Robin.
Click here to sign up now.