words and pictures

BBC have made some pretty great adaptations. When I first read - or started to read - Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, I didn't finish it. I got maybe a third of the way through. The problem...and I'm writing this from memory and it's very subjective so not everyone may agree....but the problem I found was that - at the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to the main characters, but then the story follows a particular character, and he's not a very appealing character. I kept waiting for the novel to move on from him and talk about the more interesting and appealing characters, but this phase of the novel just seemed to go on and on. I was slogging through this part to get to the good part, and I just got tired of it. I didn't want to read about this character...I wanted the 'real' story to start, and I got through - I can't remember exactly, but maybe 200 pages (it's a very long novel), and still it was in this phase, so I gave up on it. 

But then I watched a BBC miniseries of Daniel Deronda. This was back in the days (that seem so long ago now) when an episode of a TV series would be broadcast once a week (sometimes more often, but this one was once a week) and you had to tune in to the channel at the day and time it was on. This miniseries was just excellent, and it made me want to read the book because I now knew that something good was coming in the book, and that it was worth continuing reading. Just knowing that, made me read that first phase with more interest, somehow. It's a great example of how, to adapt a novel into a TV show or film, you have to fundamentally change it. Even now, remembering the TV show and the novel, my impression of them is very different, even though they are faithful to each other. 

Generally, I've been very disappointed with adaptations though, especially for the novels I really like. When I first read Frankenstein, I was really excited to hear that there was a recent film version, and I thought surely it will be really good....directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Kenneth Branagh, Robert De Niro, Helena Bonham Carter...surely, it had to be good...but no. Maybe for someone who only knew the popular culture version of the story and hadn't read the novel it would be a good film. 

It was a similar thing with Wuthering Heights - maybe even worse because I like Wuthering Heights more...the first time I sat down to watch an adaptation, I was excited, thinking that some of the magic of the novel would be captured, but I was disappointed. Then, I remember finding a film version of Wuthering Heights that had two of my favourite actors - Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche - playing Heathcliff and Catherine. I thought, whatever it's like, how could it not be good?....it's Wuthering Heights, with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche...but no, (in my opinion) it was not good. Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe I have the wrong expectations....but anyway, that's how I feel. I have seen some good versions of Jane Eyre, but maybe I only feel that way because, although I like Jane Eyre, I don't love it in the same way as I do Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein. 

With the novel, it's as if the writer is addressing you directly because you are reading the words they wrote for you, the reader, whereas, with film, a major part of the communication is visual, and the characters talk to each other, not to you.