Musing on Culture: The Adaptation Problem
The first trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’ novel The Great Gatsby hit the internet last year. As might be expected of a Baz Lurhmann film, bright colors and elaborate set design swirl into a cinematic cornucopia very much in the vein of Moulin Rouge.
Link: "The Great Gatsby" Trailer
I haven’t seen many of the films in Luhrmann’s oeuvre. I did see Moulin Rouge and did not care for it, but that alone does not prejudice me against Luhrmann as a filmmaker. His films are unique and suit some tastes more than others. The initial news that Luhrmann would be directing the latest adaptation of The Great Gatsby sparked concern among fans of both the novel and its previous Hollywood adaption.
This concern is the same worry that plagues every film based on a well-loved piece of literature: will it do justice to the book?
I dearly love F. Scott Fitgerald’s original novel, but my life is a little too busy for me to devote too much time to obsessing over book-to-screen fidelity. Less than moved by the trailer; I filed it away in the “will watch, if on Netflix Instant” file part of my mind. Then I saw an article in my RSS feed, and it started a train of thought that I wanted to indulge here.
The article was “New Great Gatsby, On the Road Adaptations Revive an Old Debate: Can Great Books Make Great Movies?” and it used the forthcoming Gatsby and On the Road adaptations as vehicles to discuss whether or not great novels can always be adapted into great movies. The article even pulled out the heavy artillery with a lengthy Stanley Kubrick quote before ultimately pulling its punch and closing with a question instead of a resolution. The question is nonetheless a valid one. Can great books be fairly treated as films?
I have my own favorite Stanley Kubrick quote on this subject: "If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed." However, the point I want to make in this week's major blog is that it isn't simply the quality of the story which determines the ultimate quality of a film--the original format of the story is also a catalytic element for a film's success.
Today, I am making the case that good books never make good films, because only good films are good films. Books can be adapted into screenplays, but the for the film to be judged fairly, it must be judged on its own merits, before its relationship to the source material is taken into account. I contend that it is categorically impossible for any adaptation to be wholly faithful to its source material. Read on.
Making the leap from page to projection.
It does not matter if a book is “great,” or even well-known, because the process of screenwriting requires specific changes to be made in the adaptation of any source material. To establish this, I will offer an extremely well-known series of adaptations as a first example: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, written by J. R. R. Tolkien and adapted for the screen by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and director Peter Jackson.
The original Lord of the Rings novels are extremely detailed. Tolkien went to unprecedented lengths to flesh out the world of his stories, designing entire original languages, histories and geographies. Producers were faced with the two basic choices which must be decided whenever any book is to be adapted:
- Preserve the intricacy of the source material by tasking a group of screenwriters to adapt each novel into a six-hour miniseries.
- Create a less expensive, wider-reaching product by condensing each novel into its own two-hour feature film.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings, it is well known which option the producers took. Detail was undeniably sacrificed in the adaptation process, but consensus among fans is that the films stayed true to the spirit of Tolkien’s novels, even if certain elements were omitted or rearranged for clarity in visual storytelling (more on that later).
The Lord of the Rings was a rare series of adaptations, because the three films not only presented the individual personalities of Tolkien’s many characters, but the themes of the novels remained intact throughout. Themes and characters wage war with each other for audiences' attention, and to that point we will now focus our attention.
Themes vs. Characters
Themes are important.
Without a theme--a “grander purpose” as it were, audiences have no reason to watch characters on a screen. Even films and television shows discussed as “character studies” are only successful as such because of the themes explored in the nature of their characters. In the case of a show like Mad Men, the central character of Don Draper is rarely a likable individual. The omniscient audience is privy to every lie he weaves between his personal and professional lives, and are even given the upper hand through flashbacks that show how Don Draper literally became Don Draper. However, despite being unscrupulous and often very cruel, Draper succeeds as a character, because the writers of Mad Men use him to explore very real issues of man’s search for identity and fulfillment.
Even in films or programs like Mad Men which are categorized as "character studies," the actions of characters, however entertaining, are completely meaningless unless they speak to a finer point, a theme. As one more example, let’s briefly look at Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.
Do the Right Thing has very few characters who are endearing for their own sake. However, Lee’s characters exist for a reason beyond their own stories. The blacks, Italians, Puerto Ricans and Asians populating Bed-Stuy in Do the Right Thing are not true individuals in the eyes of the screenplay--they are microcosms of entire populations. By writing characters with no significance as individuals, but who expressed the unique rages of entire demographics, Lee's film communicates the realities of modern racism with incredible force.
Strong stories necessitate strong characters, however unlikable they are. However, one cannot expect the same success when the order is reversed.
When a character’s individual significance is given precedence over their place as part of the film as a whole, this is often indicative of a story which lacks a truly compelling theme. If the viewer of a film is led to care more about character more than the story itself, chances are that they are watching a story which is not written to have any real significance.
In continuing our examination of characters and themes, let us look at them in the light of the writing process. It is important to understand the differences between stories written for print and stories written for film.
We will return to the idea of characters versus story in a moment, but before we do we must understand how these stories are written in the first place.
The world of difference between writing for print and writing for cinema.
In a novel or original screenplay, it is perfectly alright for characters to dominate over theme. Different kinds of stories cater to different audiences' tastes. If a film or a novel is only worth attention because it is simple, light entertainment, it is no less a legitimate work of fiction than if it is built on heavily wrought themes which are woven around every challenge of the human experience.
The problems occur when a story written for one medium (print publication) is retrofitted to the storytelling style of another (film).
Writing a story for print is a much freer process than writing for film. A novel can be as short or as long as is necessary to fully tell its story. It can be traditionally structured or spontaneous and associative in the ways in which its story unfolds for the reader. According to the story’s needs, the people, places and things within a story can be drawn in near-infinite detail. Until the story is offered to the mercies of an editor, the novelist reigns as a supreme deity over how his or her story is told. That is the freedom of written fiction.
Contrast this with the process and limitations of screenwriting, and its place in the collaborative business of filmmaking. Screenwriters do not create descriptively-written worlds which readers can interpret mentally; The delivery of a screenplay is not a direct transfer from page to mind, it is moderated by a team of artists and technicians who take it upon themselves to interpret the story and guide the viewer through in the way they deem proper. The screenplay is treated as nothing more than a working template with dialog for the actors.
Furthermore, the stories themselves are constricted in their writing by the confinement of time. No matter how much time passes within the context of a screenplay's story, and no matter how many characters it contains, the screenplay must be written so that its final, visual interpretation will not exceed a running time between ninety minutes and two hours.
Filmmaking is a business, and it must move efficiently to turn a profit. For production teams and actors to digest a story and commit it to film in a timely manner, screenwriters most often reduce the characters’ actions and thoughts to the simplest possible terms. This changes the very language of writing, and is what truly separates screenwriting from novel-writing as a distinct writing style. Consider the following example:
In a story about a hard boiled detective, the novelist might write:
Sam reached into his jacket pocket and took out the cigarette lighter his dad had given him as a kid, just for kicks on a Saturday. ‘Don’t tell your mom,’ dad had said with a grin. Now, the lighter was cold in Sam’s hand, but grew warm as he struck the light and ignited the unfiltered Marlboro between his lips. The lighter was warm, just like the bullet that popped his dad’s heart like a balloon the day after he gave Sam the lighter.
By contrast, screenwriting requires that the same action be expressed much more economically:
Sam takes his lighter out of his pocket and lights a cigarette.
A world of difference, wouldn't you agree?
Novels are hot rods, adaptations are station wagons.
Even though it is obvious that the styles of writing for print and writing for film are markedly different, that does not mean that one is less effective than the other. The problems arise when the infinite nuances of a well-written novel are pared down and re-written to be communicated visually.
A screenwriter faces a weighty problem in adapting a beloved story. There is never, ever enough time in even a two-hour film to include ever detail of a book. And, ultimately, it is the fans of the source material who hold all the cards. They know every twist of the plot, every motivation of the characters, and as a coup d'grace to the screenwriter's difficulties, every reader has seen it differently in his or her own mind.
The hairiness of the situation is made even worse by the ten-figure sums which are spent on major films. The film needs to please the fans, but every fan wants to see their own personal envisioning of the story, because anything else would be, like, totally lame.
This is the fundamental, aphoristic difference between novels and screenplays: novels are written for the theatre of the individual mind, and screenplays are written for mass exhibition via technical processes. Novels are written with a level of detail that literally cannot be expressed through the work of a camera. For a book to work at all as a film, it must be reduced.
Ultimately, most adaptations usually fall into one of the following three categories
- Mechanical movement through many plot points as possible, usually at the expense of emotion and depth of character. (Harry Potter, The Hunger Games)
- Abstract interpretation of theme which leaves the original story barely recognizable. (Apocalypse Now)
- Glorification of the characters over their story. (The Big Sleep, Fight Club)
Casting Judgement
Every adaptation must begin with the screenwriter's painstaking selection of the original story's "structural supports;" most integral parts of a story. Only when these have been established into a workable script can the screenwriter go back and add in as many of the extra details as will fit within the film's running time.
All too often, many of these so desired-for details are still deemed superfluous by studio executives and left out of the theatrical edit, being inserted back into the a "directors cut" at a much later date as "extra character moments for the fans." This, I suppose, is the only consolation some screenwriters will have after the perceived lack of effort on their part has already earned them the ire of their project's original fandom.
After Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Eragon, Twilight, The Da Vinci Code and innumerable other novels being adapted into films of lesser strength than their original novels, one would assume that book fans would have learned to not expect perfect fidelity from Hollywood; but the old indignant response continues to greet every film.
Coming full circle.
Referencing the Open Culture article from earlier, the question asked was “Can Great Books Make Great Movies?”
At the end of this piece, here is my answer: No book can ever make a good movie. Good movies make good movies.
If a movie is based on a book, book fans need to recognize and fairly acknowledge that novelists write novels, screenwriters write films. When the limitless scope of novel is shoehorned into the limitations imposed by cinematic storytelling, there will be loss in translation.
I love books. I appreciate and respect the time, thought and loving care which good (and even bad) authors impart to their work. Stories always begin with a mind, and even films and music begin in the minds of writers. In a sense, writers are progenitors of every culture.
But that does not diminish the respect which I have for the work done by filmmakers. Good filmmaking is the result of a year of collaboration between writers, directors, performers, artists, designers, caterers and enthusiastic gophers.
When an adapted film judged harshly and angrily criticized simply on the basis of its differences from the source material, book fans make a grave and very unfair mistake: in their rush defend the work of a single author, they fail to realize that what they are really doing is demeaning the honest and hard work of the hundreds of people who took as much as a year out of their lives to bring a book to visual life.
In closing...
Coming back to the subject of The Great Gatsby, I suggest that fans of the original book (like myself) acknowledge here and now that the direction of Baz Lurhmann and the acting style of Leonardo DiCaprio will most likely not capture the full depth and pathos of Jay Gatsby as originally written written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Speaking editorially, I personally believe that Tobey Maguire is dead weight whenever onscreen and will likely not help the film's cause among book fans.
However, Baz Luhrmann’s lush visual style is quite appropriate for presenting the opulence and excess of New England’s upper class during the Roaring Twenties. Leonardo DiCaprio has also become adept at playing brooding characters whom life has left feeling hollow. Between these two elements, it is more than a slightly possibility that the film will fairly present a strong interpretation F. Scott Fitzgerald's theme of a man searching for meaning in a culture which does not value substance as much as it does style.
It is quite possible that I will love Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby as much as I love Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--I will simply appreciate them in different ways.
"Dark Shadows" and the need for a moral center.
A few nights ago, I went with my sister to see the latest Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film, Dark Shadows. I am completely unfamiliar with the television show which inspired the movie, but as a film it was watchable enough. However, there was one serious drawback which prevented it from being a movie in which I could truly feel engaged: the main character was totally devoid of a moral center.
The word "moral" is a problematic one to use in an entertainment critique, because virtually every reader will have his or her own personal meaning attached to it. For the purposes of this post, when I say moral, I am not restricting the paradigm to a set of religious precepts, i.e., "that's immoral," I am talking more about the code of ethics ascribed to by the characters within the film.
Screenplays are constructed out of several ubiquitous elements: story, scenes, characters, themes, etcetera. Characters are established and they play out a story. The nuances of a story move from scene to scene along the plot. The quality of a screenplay is judged on how effectively its story and the concomitant plot provide motivation for the characters to behave the way they do. Well-written screenplays are built on foundational themes which the plot deals with in a meaningful way. The completed story is the cumulative result of characters' actions and interactions as dictated by the plot.
For a story to "work," the characters need a personal journey within the broader scope of the story: an arc. This could be a villain's transformation into a hero (or vice versa), or a character's discovery of just who murdered his parents in the dark alley all those years ago. It is much easier to sympathize with principle characters when the audience makes discoveries about the world of the film with them. That allows for sympathy (and on a subliminal level, trust) to be established between the audience and the protagonist.
Naturally, the plot is greatly strengthened when characters' actions make sense. When a character's actions contradict the arc established for them in the eyes of the audience, it creates aggravating dissonance. Some screenplays can introduce dissonance and resolve it by the time the credits roll, using it to effectively maintain audience interest. This is not the case with Dark Shadows.
The story's setup is straightforward. The principal character of this film is Barnabas Collins. He is played by Johnny Depp with all of the familiar quirks and tics which characterize a Depp performance under Tim Burton's direction. Barnabas has a tryst with a maid named Angelique (Eva Green), but falls in "true love" with Josette Du Pres (Bella Heathcote). Sadly for Barnabas, Angelique moonlights as a witch, and through her dark arts she kills both Josette and Barnabas's parents, and condemns Barnabas to eternal damnation as a vampire. Two hundred years later, ("197, to be exact"), Barnabas is unearthed and released from his chain-wrapped coffin by a construction crew. He sucks them all dry of sangre, seeks out his descendants, resurrects the family business and adjusts to life in the oh-so-groovy 1970s. As the film's antagonist, Angelique also preserved herself until the present day, keeping her lipstick fresh and her smile inviting should Barnabas return.
These plot points set up Dark Shadows to revolve around themes which are easily digestible for anyone who has seen one or more vampire films. Dark Shadows references lost love, enduring love, conflicted love and the double-edged sword of immortality. The "fish out of water" concept is thrown in for comedic relief as the Georgian Barnabas confronts modern elements from hippies to a lava lamp. But once the introductions and fun moments have been exhausted, the screenplay is lacking in several critical areas.
The largest flaw in the screenplay is in the characterization of Barnabas himself. Barnabas is the protagonist; the audience needs to sympathize with him and are given cues to do so by several of his character traits. He is lovelorn and spiritually damned, but he avoids self-pity and is committed to helping his family. After revitalizing the family business, he even manages to score Alice Cooper as the entertainment for a town-wide soiree. His characterization as a sympathetic figure is almost compelling, except for one thing.
Barnabas is an amoral sociopath.
While Barnabas' relationship to his family is noble and his relationship to the modern world humorous, his charisma ends there. Whether out of an unclear character study on the part of the screenwriter or a misguided subservience to more prevalent vampire lore, Barnabas is never fully developed into a quirky Burton protagonist. Too often, his persona collapses into yet another interpretation of Dracula (or even Count Orlok). In just the events shown onscreen, Barnabas commits at least two acts of mass murder, murders a principle character and dumps the body in the ocean, and uninhibitedly hypnotizes friend and foe alike to get what he wants.
Dark Shadows pays homage to a long-standing theme of all vampire films and literature, which is the vampire's attempt to reclaim a lost lover by winning the heart of their modern reincarnation. In this case, Josette is reincarnated as the modern-day Victoria Winters, the Collins' family governess. But before pursuing her, his self-proclaimed "true love," Barnabas soullessly and senseless engages in another night of loveless passion with Angelique. Their lovemaking scene is a masterpiece of wire-fu stuntwork, but is simply at odds with literally everything else which is said about the love triangle between Barnabas, Angelique and Victoria/Josette. A scene of this nature, thus unmotivated, cheapens all of Barnabas's further expressions of love toward Victoria, including the film's final scene.
To complete his lack of ethics, Barnabas speaks constantly of vampirism as a curse, even going so far as to attempt a cure. But this is undermined by his total lack of remorse for any and all of his conscienceless actions. Most of the time, no matter what he might say, he seems to take great pleasure in the abilities and mores germane to vampires.
For a film to work, the audience needs to care about the protagonist. But for an audience to care, they need to understand. Barnabas cannot be understood, because his actions condemn his dialog to being a string of non sequiturs.
Efforts to humanize Barnabas through comedic foibles and bursts of filial devotion are undercut by the fact that, at his core, Barnabas is a very selfish individual with no true convictions. If one takes into account that he dabbled in the occult himself before being made a vampire, there is little or no difference between Barnabas and Angelique, only in their respective goals.
When too many similarities exist between the protagonist and antagonist in a story, a writer or director has to dispel them for clarity or explore them for drama. Neither happens in Dark Shadows. In the end, the audience is left with a mildly entertaining film containing scattered moments of comedic dexterity and comfortable retreads of familiar Tim Burton motifs. But the story fails on a structural level.
Instead of laughing and crying along with a compelling and quirky character, like Barnabas Collins could have and should have been, I found myself watching his numerous illogical decisions with impassive detachment.
Film is a visual medium, and the old adage "actions speak louder than words" is never more true than in cinema.
External Links:
Writing with Hitchcock: Plot vs. Story in Alfred Hitchcock'sVertigo - YouTube
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Redux
There is nothing quite like a Victorian adventure story. Victorian adventure novels have a unique flavor; detached, yet oddly engaging. Often written in the first person as diary entries or a journalist's notes, they offer a unique perspective on adventure and action in a style that is now coming back into vogue in books like The Hunger Games and World War Z, which seem to be reviving the art of first-person narrative.
In the world of Victorian literature, one name stands apart from the rest. You can talk about H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle left the greatest literary legacy of his era in the creation of Sherlock Holmes. I could almost stop with that, because just the name "Sherlock Holmes" carries enough weight and individual associations that my thoughts on the subject are, honestly, entirely superfluous.
Much like I enjoy Doctor Who without feeling the need to identify as a "Whovian," the adventures of Sherlock Holmes occupy a special place in my heart, but I don't call myself a "Sherlockian" or a "Baker Street Irregular." I enjoy good books and good films, and Doyle's stories happen to be some of the best one can ask for in either medium. I have enjoyed the stories since before I was old enough to fully appreciate them. The annotated editions are on the shelf next to me as I write this piece, and through the added maps, background information and photographs, the books inspired me to take a sincere interest in the actual history of London and the life of the man who wrote the stories.
The impact of the character of Sherlock Holmes is indicative of the brilliance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Harlan Ellison, the great science fiction writer and endlessly entertaining raconteur, went so far as to make the following statement in an interview:
"You want to be smart?...Read the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. You read the entire canon--there aren't that many--you read the entire canon and you will be smarter than you ever need to be. Because, every one of them is based on the idea of deductive logic. Keep your eyes open and be alert. That's what all good writing says: wake up and pay attention!"
Ellison was right. If you read a Sherlock Holmes story online or on a device, make the text as small as possible and look at it statistically. Most of the stories are made up of questions. Holmes asks questions until the interviewees are out of answers. When he has asked enough questions, he sifts through all of the pertinent facts in his mind and often deduces a correct conclusion without leaving his apartment. Solving a crime was, for him, an intellectual exercises, and one in which he engaged largely for selfish reasons. This fact was made clear in a passage from The Sign of the Four that is most often included in adaptations for its perfect summation of his character.
“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”
Holmes is incredibly nuanced and interesting as an individual, but beyond the literary skill required to create good characters, Doyle had to create a believable genius. Holmes couldn't satisfy readers or project brilliance by simply ascribing titles and backstories to the people he observed; he had to be able to explain how he knew what he knew. And that is where Doyle was truly brilliant.
Doyle was able to take simple elements of daily life, from splatters of mud on clothing to a dog's tooth marks on a walking stick and extrapolate correlations and plausible causes from them in his stories. Bear in mind, he wrote for his audience. The distance of time between the original publication and the present day can lull modern readers into a casual acceptance of "that's just what it says," but that is a cheap form of acceptance! Doyle made Holmes impressive because he made perfect sense to his readers in 1887. His stories were authentic because they referred to tools, professions, crimes, international political climates, pets, clothing and customs with which his readers were intimately familiar. And he did it so well that his stories were extremely popular in their day. If they had been outlandish statements that didn't ring true with his readers, such popularity would not have been the case.
Nevertheless, Holmes is still a fictional character. Detractors from the stories will likely remind the reader that many of Holmes deductions never reference any unspoken margin of error, and were furthermore dependent on the strictly defined social customs and not-yet-disproven pseudosciences of the Victorian age. This is exemplified in the following passage from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, in which Holmes draws conclusions from trace clues found inside a hat. His deductions only work in an era in which phrenology is accepted as science and women were expected to maintain their husbands' accoutrements, but Doyle's level of detail is nonetheless staggering:
“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?”
For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man with so large a brain must have something in it.”
“The decline of his fortunes, then?”
“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he has assuredly gone down in the world.”
“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral retrogression?”
Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he putting his finger upon the little disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one, it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not entirely lost his self-respect.”
“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”
“The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.”
“But his wife—you said that she had ceased to love him.”
“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week's accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife's affection.”
“But he might be a bachelor.”
“Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the card upon the bird's leg.”
“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not laid on in his house?”
“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent contact with burning tallow—walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you satisfied?”
“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing; “but since, as you said just now, there has been no crime committed, and no harm done save the loss of a goose, all this seems to be rather a waste of energy.”
Waste of energy, indeed. But impressive, for both Doyle and Holmes.
As the development of entertainment technology increased by leaps and bounds very soon after the introduction of Sherlock Holmes into popular literature, it is no surprise that Sherlock Holmes started appearing onscreen as early as 1900. It is hard to imagine any literary figure who has been adapted for the screen more times than Sherlock Holmes. At present, Wikipedia lists seventy-three men who have played Holmes on the stage, large and small screens, and radio.
The two actors who have most recently brought Holmes back into the public consciousness, Robert Downey, Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch, have reintroduced Holmes to the world in unique ways. The interpretations of Doyle's stories have been incredibly unique when compared to previous adaptations, but also surprisingly respectful to Doyle in their respective steampunk and modern-day treatments of the stories.
Looking at it objectively, Guy Ritchie's first film adaptation of Holmes, starring Downey Jr., is much closer to the original material than most critics give it credit for being. In Sherlock Holmes, which I saw with my family on Christmas Day, 2009, draws much of its dialogue verbatim from Doyle's stories. Of course, the story itself is a new narrative for Holmes, one with manifold problems, but a fun story nonetheless. Where it succeeded most, however, was in its interpretation of Holmes himself.
In the stories, Holmes is constantly referred to by others as having skills and abilities which he used when necessary. But, Doyle was careful to structure his stories so that Holmes is never actually seen by Watson when engaged to the fullest extent of his abilities. Holmes is shown to the readers via Watson as action in repose. We only see him when his mind is doing the work, but throughout the short stories and novels, Holmes talked of by others as a superb boxer, a chemist in the tradition of mad scientists, and an accomplished collegiate theatre actor who used his craft professionally to completely assumed new identities while in disguise.
The screenplay of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes diverged from its source material by showing Holmes fighting and assimilating his disguises. Whereas Watson's point of view, often catching nothing more than the aftermath of a fight or hearing the story of a journey in disguise from Holmes after the fact, is the reader's only glimpse of Holmes in the text, Ritchie's camera follows Holmes when Watson is absent.
Through this shift in viewpoint, we are treated to the Holmes that actually did exist in the text; the difference lies in which side of him we see. Sadly, last year's sequel Game of Shadows, while having moments of brilliance, was very inferior to its predecessor as a film as well as an adaptation what makes Sherlock Holmes the character that he is. When Sherlock Holmes gets too far away from London, he is no longer Holmes, and the most recent film inadvertently turned him into James Bond. I will say, however, that the casting of Jared Harris as Moriarty is a decision for which I will never cease applauding.
Most recently, the BBC has brought an entirely new perspective to the Sherlock Holmes mythos, delivered through the mind of writer and show runner Steven Moffat. More and more, Steven Moffat is styling himself as the Leonardo da Vinci of screenwriting. He possesses a mind with a seemingly endless wellspring of creativity, and a propensity to turn viewers on their ears with plot twists, overlapping timelines and character deaths. In the space of five years, he created and ran the underrated Jekyll, took over the writing of Doctor Who's two most staggeringly complex seasons to date, co-wrote the script for The Adventures of Tintin, only to leave Tintin early to be the guiding hand behind Sherlock.
True to form, Moffat wasted no time in making Sherlock thoroughly unique. He accomplished this by doing something that no one else had done before: he placed Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in modern-day London. Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr. had created a very modern interpretation of Holmes, but they retained him in his original, Victorian environs; the overall effect being one of confinement for the character's personality. By contrast, Moffat's reasons for total commitment to a modern setting were staggeringly obvious:
“We just decided we were going to update him properly; he’d be a modern man because he’s a modern man in the Victorian version, he’s always using newfangled things, like telegrams. He’s someone who appreciates and enjoys technology; he’s a bit of a science boffin, he’s a geek, he would do all those things. I just think it’s fun, I don’t think all the fantastic tech we’ve got limits the storytelling, I think you can use it in all sorts of ways.” [Link]
"Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes - and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters." [Link]
As previously stated, staggeringly obvious. These reasons are also in keeping with the spirit of Sherlock Holmes as a character. As the Victorian Holmes was always on the cutting edge of the era's science, publishing articles in print journals on the subject of science in deduction, Moffat's Holmes does exactly the same thing, albeit with newer science and the internet. Moffat even went so far as to placate hardcore fans with some long-awaited catharsis, allowing Sherlock to poke fun at the enduring image of himself as constantly wearing a deerstalker cap. It could even be said that Moffat "lucked out" with the recent British involvement in the War on Terror in Afghanistan, which allowed him to retain even more of John Watson's original character as a wounded veteran fresh from the Afghani desert.
Sherlock Holmes, as Moffat indicated, is an individual who transcends the limitations of a specific time or place. Furthermore, the level of respect which Moffat has shown to Doyle has been deep. Obscure lines of dialogue and camera setups which perfectly mimic Sidney Paget's Strand illustrations make appearances in the BBC series, and are a never-ending source of delight for attentive fans. To Moffat's further credit, he has kept the show confined to London for two seasons, with the exception of the obligatory Baskerville episode, apparently feeling no need superfluously bloat the supposed importance of a case by giving it global or supernatural import.
The idea of Holmes as an eternally modern man is also why I can defend the Guy Ritchie adaptations, albeit to a lesser extent. Culture evolves. As Stephen Fry said, "Evolution is all about restless and continuous change, mutation and variation." The more time that passes between the present day and that moment in 1886 when Doyle first put pen to paper and wrote Holmes into existence in A Study in Scarlet, the more necessary it becomes to update the adaptations to appeal to the very different culture that might be seeing it for the first time.
Provided that the Doyle estate protects Sir Arthur's stories from being tampered with or expanded by new writers (such as the recent continuation of the late Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels under the authorship of Eric von Lustbader), so that future generations may continue to experience the stories as they were written, not just as stories, but as a reflection of Victorian culture, and a stellar example of the period's style of writing.
The Ritchie/Downey films have reached the widest audience thus far in recent years, and they have their flaws. However, they retain enough of the character's essence to make people want to read the books. I am personally unprepared to admit that the BBC's Sherlock has any flaws, but I will concede that they are unconventional in their unabashed commitment to Holmes as a modern man.
Where too many literary fans of Doyle and Holmes make a mistake, (and this holds equally true for fans of all book franchises which have been adapted for the screen), is in confusing the quality of a film or television show with the fidelity of the adaptation from its source. Simply being different from the source material does not automatically make a film "bad" in any objective sense of screenwriting or production quality.
The root cause of many adaptations being popularly labeled as "bad," is that good books have the tendency to become the equivalent of good friends to devoted readers, and any deviation from what fans already know and love consequently feels like a very personal slight. The more popular the book, the better the odds are that subjective fan opinions will color popular opinion far more than objective reviews which weigh the adaptation on its own merit.
However, there is one point on which I believe that all fans of Doyle's stories can agree. If either of the two (soon to be three) franchises currently celebrating the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle inspire their audiences to seek out the source material and discover the brilliance of Doyle's work on their own, then the adaptations, no matter how disagreeable to some fans, have succeeded. And I think we can all be happy about that.
Cinema and Ideas
I had an interesting conversation in my film practicum class yesterday. To understand the context, I need to give some background on the instructor.
Dr. Karimi is eighty years old this year, and has a tendency to monologue on whatever strikes his fancy on a given day. By the time a student reaches his practicum class, he can expect little more from the lecture meetings than the topic de jour. All of the actual work for the class is done outside the classroom, so attending the class at all is more of a courtesy to the instructor than a necessity for a grade.
Be that as it may, the class is worth attending every now and again; mostly for the same reasons that I enjoy oral histories. Given Dr. Karimi's age, the amount of time he has spent as filmmaker-turned-teacher, his personal stories and perspectives can be incredibly interesting. This is made even more interesting for the people he claims to have been friends with during his college days. The list gets longer every semester, but right now it includes Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Alan Watts and Stanley Kramer.
So, yesterday's conversation.
One of Dr. Karimi's pet subjects, based on his sixty-plus years of observing film culture, is dehumanization in cinema. Dehumanization is a reference to the effect of the film's elements on its characters and story, and the consequence for the film's audience, over a period of time, is desensitization to visual depictions of cruelty, and the onslaught of vicious language from one human being to another. Dr. Karimi likes to ask his classes about what they expect from the films they watch.
When asked their thoughts on language and violence, the stock student response is "realism;" that a lack of coarseness or violence will cause a film to lack authenticity. This response is ignorant.
A matter of great concern to me is that the concept of true cinema is lost on many self-professed student "film buffs." For cinema to be a form of artistic expression, I firmly believe that the study of film (whether in a formal setting or simply as a self-directed appreciator), must return to the early days of the silent, experimental films and camera tests and trace the heritage of film from then to the present day.
All cinema has its roots in documentary, because it began as a novelty. From Edison to the Lumiere Brothers, early films simply captured moments from everyday life. The famous scenes of the train arriving, factory workers, families dining in their gardens; these were all familiar scenes that people knew very well from their own experience. One could say that the thrill came from seeing the familiar in such a larger than life setting.
Like everything else, film must evolve, or it stagnates. It didn't take long for early experimenters in film to realize just how many creative effects were possible in motion pictures. From traditional photographic techniques like double exposure, to (for the time) new techniques that relied on nothing more than the raw mechanics of the camera, such as reversing the film or changing the speed. Naturally, editing techniques became more sophisticated as well; cutting and splicing grew from early use as special effects (disappearing props and people, ala Georges Melie) to a highly-refined art of its own for the creation of montage and, wonder of wonders, parallel story lines!
Bear in mind, all of this took place in the absence of sound. Until the advent of sound experiments in film in the early twenties, film was a purely visual art form. Title cards had their place, but there was a burden on the director, cameraman and actors to convey thoughts and ideas in strictly visual terms. And this is where the idea of "pure" or "true" cinema comes from. Rudolf Arnheim wrote on this extensively, and Alfred Hitchcock was also in agreement with the philosophy that cinema worked best as an art form when it relied on visual communication. Arnheim went so far as to make the case (and convincingly so) that when dialogue was given more precedence than the work of the camera to communicate information, it was no longer "film as art," but "filmed theatre."
The idea of "filmed theater" was perhaps more relevant in the 1930s, when Arnheim wrote the majority of his essays and theatre retained more influence in popular culture, but the idea still holds weight. The progression of film from simple one-reel recordings of a train arriving to highly artistic (and often alarmingly complex) documentaries, heartbreakingly tragic comedies, and artistically-brilliant dramas that reflected the concerns of their time, in the space of only a few decades, is absolutely staggering.
Arnheim contended that the advent of cost-effective sound in film retarded its development when it was just short of reaching its zenith as an art form. The sophistication of pure visual experience was reduced again to a commercialized novelty as films reinvented themselves as "talkies" with restrictive equipment and a new generation of actors faced with the cognitive dissonance of what they had seen in silent films versus what was desired for films with audible dialogue.
It didn't take long for the color processes to emerge and reinvent films yet again. No sooner had dialogue been mastered and a new style of acting been standardized than films were once again pushed back to the realm of novelty with the promise of color. An objective viewing of color films in the 1930s against their black and white counterparts makes it apparent that different levels of craft went into the visuals of the different chromatic schemes. Going back a step further, the visual aesthetics and sophistication of silent films often far exceeded what was seen in later years.
An individual more enterprising than myself could maintain an entire blog just on the battles of film and television throughout the 1950s and onward, but sufficed to say that every time films made breakthroughs in style or allowable content, commercial interests either marginalized them or held them back as the studios struggled to maintain their grip on culture against the onslaught of television.
And, with some unforgivable omissions in the timeline of film history, we come to the present day. With television and movies (and now digital distribution) all competing, visual entertainment is starting to all look the same. There are a few exceptions, of course, but by and large, television has caught up with films in regard to production value, and it looks like some uneasy truces will soon fall into place between studios and multi-platform distributors. But it seems that the ups and downs of film history have left audiences confused as to what films are actually about.
Finally, back to what I originally intended to write about!
Where do expectations of realism factor into visual storytelling?
Films, at their core, are about the visual communication of ideas. But when films began to risk losing their audience to television, films tried everything to hang on to them. Epic "cast of thousands!" sword-and-sandal productions and the experimental technical gimmickry of the 1950s and early 1960s proved to be both financially unsustainable, and hardly a serious thematic competitor for audience attention as post-war prosperity and optimism was dimmed by the harsh realities of the American civil rights movement and the compounding effect of the Vietnam War. Because of all of these factors, plus many more, I believe that a conscious decision was made to draw audiences back to the cinemas based on prurient interests.
The late 1960s saw the entrance of new ratings systems that allowed more creative flexibility, and, consequently, the ancient enemies of all Puritans, sex, language and violence. And this was the point where there was a sharp degradation of film as a method of conveying ideas.
Films are excellent mediums for telling stories. But the best stories are the ones that not only have interesting characters, but provide insights into life and culture. Ideas. But if films sacrifice substantive ideas in favor of fleshing out mere stories with extra violence, "shocking" language (our culture's definition of what constitutes vulgarity seems to be in a fresh state of flux), or sexuality, then one can expect nothing else than what we have today. The expectation that realism in cinema comes from the content rather than the authenticity of the ideas it presents to the audience.
The argument that realism requires a certain kind of content usually includes a sub-argument that some characters or stories make no sense or do not ring true without their speaking certain kinds of language or engaging in certain kinds of behavior. There is credence to this, but it begs the question of whether or not the film also contains an idea to accompany its content, or if the content is there for its own sake. There is some subjectivity on this point, because each individual has their own personal criteria for what makes a film "good."
I hate to bring up Quentin Tarantino in this piece, because he is the go-to figure in these kinds of arguments far too often, but his name inevitably comes up, especially when speaking with college students. Tarantino's films are notable for their violence and profanity. Their are also fun to watch. But are there ideas presented? Largely, no. There are traces of ideas, but the films themselves do not explore them. Tarantino is a filmmaker concerned with stylistic experiments. His films contain no originality other than the order in which he arranges elements of films which have influenced him. His films exist in a closed universe where every element and much of the dialogue is homage to his predecessors, and Tarantino's skill is not in organizing them into ideas, but in organizing them into an entertaining order and style.
Conversely, Woody Allen is an example of a mindset opposite. Allen's ouvre reflects a filmmaking mindset that is entirely consumed by ideas. Some bold visuals are to be remembered from his films; the gorgeous, low-key cinematography of Manhattan, the 1970s interpretation of futuristic post-modernism in Sleeper, and the dreamlike monochrome cinematography of Stardust Memories and Shadows and Fog. But the visual style of Allen's films is not the primary means of communication. The ideas exist entirely in the dialogue, and despite Allen's frequent collaboration with excellent cinematographers, the visual style of his films are there solely as ambience for conversations. In fact, Arnheim would most likely define Allen's films as the perfect examples of "filmed theatre," because they are primarily comprised of long takes of people talking to each other.
Perhaps the best example of a filmmaker who most successfully married ideas with the verbal and visual delivery was Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick was a very bold filmmaker in every sense of the word. He used cinematography to communicate both the outer actions and inner motivations of his characters. He used montage, long takes and overall technical proficiency to create films that were visually inventive and artistic in ways that moved ideas forward. He is one of my personal favorite filmmakers for this reason.
To sum up, the question is asked: "do films require certain kinds of content to convey realism?" And this is the wrong question.
The question should be, "is the content of a film necessary to convey its idea?"
Film as an art form should not be tied down to realism. If films were entirely realistic, they would be incredibly boring, because real life is rarely as exciting as a story written for film. If we are to still refer to filmmaking as a form of art, it needs to communicate ideas, not simply provide escape or entertainment. When a film is viewed, the idea should be made clear.
Recently, I was impressed with The Descendants for its tight focus on ideas concerning past, present and future family legacies. Like Allen's films, much of the storytelling was in the dialogue, but it was also visually engaging throughout, and made conscious choices to explore characters through its camera setups. There was language that some people I know found distasteful, but it was a rare case where characters and ideas were aided by frequent profanity.
The trouble with "dehumanizing" elements is that the problems led to the competition between television and film are no longer relevant, especially in the era of cable. There is no longer any need for the content of cinema to be markedly more risqué or vulgar than television, because the standards are fairly interchangeable between films and cable television shows. But after forty years, the expectations are firmly entrenched, and films are, from the beginning, written to be entertainment rather than to convey ideas through aesthetics.
I don't want to extend my speculation too far, but I am willing to state that the newest generation of movie-goers is almost incapable of judging films based on the quality of their ideas. This isn't because of any lack of intelligence on their part, but a lack of variety and awareness of film history. I honestly don't know what the solution is. The films are there to be watched; it took me less than thirty seconds to get links to three classic films, in their entirety, from YouTube. The problem is that too few people know where to begin.
Those who fail to study history...