On Adaptations

It's hard to believe that it's been a week since my last post. I spent a lot of time on that: I re-read I Capture the Castle; watched the film; watched the commentary; re-read a few scenes; then re-watched a few.

I wrote the post last Monday and edited it on Tuesday.

But the more I think about the adaptation of I Capture the Castle--more specifically the comments of the screenwriter, Heidi Thomas--the angrier I get.

I thought she made some condescending comments--there is no novel that can be transferred intact perfectly to the screen. Doesn't everyone know that?

I remember my first conversation about adaptations--it was with my mother after I had seen Gone with the Wind. I was around 12 or 13; the film was good, but I was disappointed. I missed Wade Hampton; more importantly, I missed Will Benteen. My mother said that they couldn't include all the characters and I got that. But I still missed Will--I thought he was an integral character.

Some changes didn't make sense to me: Rhett suggesting that he and Scarlet had a chance and she rejected him. That wasn't in the book because that was one of the ironies in the story--Rhett and Scarlett were in love, but both were too proud to admit their feelings.

I also questioned the casting of Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes. Scarlett loved Ashley because he was dashing and handsome: Leslie Howard wasn't. My sister said that Ashley was the son of the man with the greatest plantation in Georgia, and that appealed to Scarlett. While that was true, Leslie still wasn't the Ashley of the book.

But, back to my problems with I Capture the Castle. In my earlier post, I mentioned Thomas' comment that Stephen prostituted himself. Was that a joke, an exaggeration? She also commented that Stephen was morally outraged when Rose and Neil kissed. WTF--where did that come from? I read him as surprised and embarrassed.

The film downplays James Mortmain's writing block and his work, which is a huge subplot in the book. Thomas adds a scene before the added wedding, saying that she needed a scene between the brothers that wasn't in the book because of Cassandra's point of view. But she could easily have dramatised the scenes described in the novel between the brothers and Rose and Simon instead. Having Simon serve as Neil's best man is unnecessarily cruel.

I love the scene between Cassandra and Topaz in the book when Topaz is considering leaving James. Thomas changes that to an "I'm sorry, please come home" cliche.

The worst change is to the final conversation between Cassandra and Simon. As written, most of the conversation is about James' book. Only at the end of the conversation does it get personal when Simon asks Cassandra if she wants to go to America with him. They don't talk about her feelings for him.

Instead Thomas has Cassandra ask how Simon can still be in love with Rose after what she did. Cassandra also makes a snarky comment to Simon in Thomas' feeble attempt to let her get in the last word.

In the final pages of the novel, Cassandra is finishing her journal. In the margins, she writes "I love you, I love you, I love you." The screenplay changes it to "I love, I have loved, I will love." Apparently Thomas didn't want the ending to be about Cassandra's love for Simon. But that's what it was about!

Perhaps next time, Thomas can write an original screenplay; I don't intend to see it.

Appropriately, I recently read a post from Streams of Unconsciousness that discusses the latest film version of The Great Gatsby. Riku writes, "People will complain that a movie is not true to the book but what they really mean is that it's not true to their interpretation of the book."

That may be true, but I wish Thomas' interpretation didn't re-write Dodie Smith's story.