My first year of English uni program was really excellent. I can't imagine a better introduction. We got a taste of everything and it was really accessible. It was a great foundation for further study. One of the novels we read was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Before I read it I wondered why what I thought was a kind of tawdry horror story had been chosen for study at this level. But it turned out to be a very fine piece of literature. It's still one of my favorite novels.
So, I was really excited that there was actually a movie version of the story coming out not long after I read the book. In my naivety, I thought that the film would be faithful to the book, but when I saw it I was disappointed. It was yet another iteration of the popular story that we know so well, in which the 'monster' is an inarticulate oaf who destroys people and property because he doesn't know any better or he's just evil. That's a different story from the novel.
I had a similar experience with Wuthering Heights. I've never seen a film version that does the novel justice - not even close. I think it's only because I like these novels so much, that it bothers me. The films are pretty good - they have good actors and they're well made. The problem from my point of view is that they tell a different story to the novels. If I didn't know the novels and have my own ideas about them, I'd probably enjoy the films.
Maybe that's why it's so hard - seemingly impossible - for a film to be faithful to great works of literature. Great literature inscribes images into your mind, draws you into its world so that your mind completes the text. It's as if the text gives you a dream. How can films ever compete with that? They can in their own right. There are some great films and TV shows, but I think it's extremely difficult to translate a novel to the screen. It's a different thing. To do it well you have to change it.
There's nothing wrong with that, and sometimes it's really well done. I really like Peter Carey's novel, Oscar and Lucinda, and I enjoyed the film version of it as well, but each - the film and the book - is a unique work of art, with its own theme and plot. Just like with Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, I read the book before seeing the film. I think with Oscar and Lucinda though, I was able to enjoy the film on its own terms. With Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, when I watched the films, I was excited to see the amazing novels I had read translated into film. I wanted what I saw in the novels to be in the films, and I was really invested in that, so I was probably bound to be disappointed. I feel like I should give these films another go though. I might watch them sometime.
One screen version that I thought did a very good job was the BBC mini-series of Daniel Deronda. I had actually stopped reading the novel because I felt like I had to slog through hundreds of pages to get to the interesting part and in the end I gave up altogether. You can't read a book that way - just bearing with it until it gets good. But then I watched the BBC series and really loved it and went back to the book and this time I finished it. I think what inspired me to go back to the book was the realisation of something the series made very clear - that the main character in the story was Daniel Deronda, not Gwendolen Harleth. When I first read the book, I thought she was the main character, and, after a brief introduction to her right at the beginning, her story doesn't really start to unfold until, I think around half way into this very long book. So, that first half seemed to be a lot of padding, and it focused on a very unpleasant character. I just got sick of reading it. Then I watched the BBC series and I was captivated by the character of Daniel Deronda, which made me want to read the book. I can't remember how that inspiration that I got from the series changed my reading of the first half of the book, but it did and I really enjoyed the book.
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