Much Ado About Nothing

Radical-literal interpretations of texts into films are quickly becoming my favorite type of adaptations.  First, with Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, and now with two versions of Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing.  

The first is Joss Whedon's adaptation of Much Ado.  It is literal in that he keeps Shakespeare's language intact.  He transcribes exactly from the words of the play.  But his adaptation is radical in the change of setting and time.  Showing the film in modern-day somewhere, (we know LA is where it was filmed, but they don't ever mention their location) dressing the characters in modern clothes, and updating the functions of characters (being some sort of celebrity instead of royalty/general upper class) brings a new dimension to the story.  Whedon is able to make the story more easily relatable while still keeping the not as relatable language.  It is strange at first, but as the film goes on the language become more normal.  The updated setting of the story makes it easier for us to understand what's going on, and what the character's functions are.  Having the characters be some sort of celebrity makes sense to us, whereas general upper class is probably not as easy a concept for us to grasp.  But keeping the language allows the original intent to still shine through and drive the story.

Here we can watch as Whedon narrates a key scene:

The second is the BBC adaptation of Much Ado.  This version might be more on the radical side of radical-literal, but it's faith to the story makes me comfortable keeping it in the radical-literal category.  The BBC version updated everything--setting, language, even some names, but remains extremely faithful to the story.  Some things at the end were changed, but I think that goes along well with their modernization of the story.  All the updating manages to not get in the way of the story.  It is still clearly understood as an adaptation of Much Ado.  If anything, like Whedon's version, the updating helps us to see the story in a new way and to understand it better.  The newsroom provided new ways for characters to be "spied" on by other characters, and made the security guard figures commonplace rather than confusing.

Here we can see Benedick being tricked and then reflecting on what he's heard:

Both adaptations do excellent work adapting Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, allowing their pieces to stand on their own.

What Makes an Interesting Story?

Throughout this class there has been some sporadic discussion of what makes a movie watchable, or a book readable, but I hadn't realized how often it came up until sitting down to write this post.  It's come up in, or in looking at, Stranger than Fiction, Adaptation., Memento, and Emma, but each for different purposes.

Stranger than Fiction was concerned about the end of the story.  We know it was apparently an excellent novel--Harold and Professor Hilbert tell us that--Harold begging her to keep it the same, and Professor Hilbert asking Harold to go through with the ending.  But when Karen decided to change the ending of her book, Professor Hilbert became concerned, saying the ending made the book, that it wouldn't be the same, or near as good with a different, "happy" ending.  The story suddenly became less interesting with a happy ending, with a "storybook" ending.  Does that mean stories can't be interesting and happy?  Or how much does a crucial event, like the death of a character, influence the captivation the story has on the audience?

Memento has no problem captivating an audience.  It's choppy, repetitive (but not necessarily in a helpful way), and confusing.  It moves backwards while cutting between scenes of a phone conversation that takes up much less time that rest of the story--though is told along side the story, making it seem almost like it's taking up as much time as the entirety of the story.  We almost unquestioningly align ourselves with Leonard while still trying to keep alive a healthy skepticism about just how reliable our short-term-memory-lost narrator can be.  By the end the only thing we know for sure is that we can't trust Natalie and that Leonard has killed a couple of people.  And that makes the story super interesting.  We want to watch it again.  We want to know exactly what happened.  In class we discussed what the film would have been like had it happened in correct chronological order.  Would it have been as interesting?  Probably not.

Adaptation. was focused on something entirely different.  Charlie wasn't concerned with timing the story, but how to make the story watchable in the first place.  The original story is interesting, but extremely difficult to make into an interesting film.  How does changing the medium affect the impact of the story?  Charlie struggled with how to make a film out of everyday events--where people don't change or have epiphanies; where nothing really happens.  In the end the film becomes an abomination of serial appropriations--designed to make films interesting.

Emma is, quite literally, a book about almost nothing.  It's 400 pages of talk, and frolic, and "petty" worry, but it manages to still invite our attention.  Why?  Because it speaks to us as people.  It is relatable, at times tragically funny, and always honest.  We identify with Emma even when we hate ourselves for being so mean.  It's a good story because it reveals something to us about ourselves.  But does that make a good film?  Many of the filmed adaptations of Emma emphasize the relationship she enters into at the end, and her change leading up to it.  Do films need to be more direct and exaggerated for us to find them worthwhile?

What are your favorite types of movies?  What makes them so watchable?

Distanced from the Source: The 2013 The Great Gatsby

In 2013, Baz Luhrmann decided to tackle this "un-adaptable" novel and make it into film.  The 2013 TGG is strikingly different than its 1974 counterpart, but is still faithful to its source text.

Let's start by looking at the same party scene from the first film.

In contrast, we get the 2013 version of this scene.  It feels like a crazy party.  Some stylistic choices made my Luhrmann could be questioned, but is definitely feels like a party.  In the novel Nick says he was drunk at this party, and we assume almost everyone else at that party was equally drunk.  The scene is chaotic, with flashes to a saxophone player across the street, loud music, and people spilling things and dancing.  The scene gets more chaotic as time passes, as, I imagine, drunk party-goers would.

Remembering Boozer's levels of distance of adaptation, I would argue the 2013 TGG fits all three categories, but is a literal radical interpretation of the novel.  Literal in that it translates some dialogue exactly from the novel and includes small details that make the story fuller, and radical in the way it chooses to portray it in film.  Literal in feel, traditional in content, radical in style.  The 2013 TGG captured the feel of the novel, even if the music was different, or the scenes were shot weird and had words overlaying them; maybe even because of those things.

When the film came out, many people had a problem with the use of modern music.  I did, and I hadn't even seen it.  I didn't understand why someone would want to make a movie that looked like the 20s, but didn't sound like the 20s.  It felt like they were only going part of the way instead of putting in the full effort.

But once I saw the film I changed my mind completely.  Talking about it in class also helped me to see why Luhrmann and Jay-Z might have made the decisions they did with the soundtrack of the film.  Seeing the whole film (rather than just trailers) with the modern music made the novel come to life.  It put me in a place of understanding with the novel.  I understood more completely what it might have been to party it up at Gatsby's mansion, or the importance of where Gatsby gets his money, and even the intense longing Gatsby has for Daisy, and how she'll never be what he needs her to be.

Mike brought up an interesting point in class that Lesley then furthered.  I had similar feelings, but had never realized them into words, but Mike did, when he said about the soundtrack that maybe they put in the modern music to have us feel what they (the people in the 20s) would have felt.  Along these same lines, Lesley brought up rap culture, and how affluence and the ability to be extravagant and flaunt excess wealth is still very much a part of "making it" in the industry today.  Therefore, the use of rap music in the film helps to portray that same feeling onto our characters from the 20s.  Especially in this scene:

It's a contemporization for understanding and fidelity to meaning.  That idea blew my mind.

But I don't really know why it was so revolutionary to me.  When I was writing my blog post on Adaptation I thought of this discussion and couldn't wait to bring it up here.  We adapt the Bible to be modern for our understanding and fidelity to meaning.  That's why a new version comes out like every two years--so that new readers can understand it just as well as readers in the past.  What I see Luhrmann and Jay-Z doing with the soundtrack is just that.  Reading the novel gave depth to the 2013 TGG, but it wasn't necessary for my understanding, and vice versa.

Distanced from the Source: The 1974 The Great Gatsby

The 1974 version of The Great Gatsby (TGG) is definitely .   The novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald is unique in its tone and way of story telling--so much so that some have called it un-adaptable in terms of making it into a movie or other medium.

Jack Boozer talks about the three levels of distance from a source.  He says the closest to the source is the literal/close reading level.  Next is the general correspondence/traditional level.  and farthest from the source material is the distant referencing/radical level.

In our class we talk a lot about what the most important criteria is when determining how "good" or "bad" an adaptation is.  Most people would probably say fidelity is still the most important thing to look at when judging an adaptation.  But to that I would ask, "Fidelity to what?"

The 1974 TGG is largely a literal adaptation of the novel, that borders on traditional because it is not a four hour movie.  Obviously it leaves parts out for time's sake, but the language of the movie is taken straight out of the novel, making it "faithful" to its source text.   But it doesn't capture the essence of the novel.  As Lesley pointed out humorously in class, it's like the director said, "Now lift your hand out toward that light, cause that's what it says he does in the book."  They got the words right, but lacked the emotion of the novel.

One scene in particular stuck out to me in this:  the first party Nick goes to, the one at Tom and Myrtle's apartment in the city.  The novel isn't entirely clear as to what happened at the party other than drunkenness, conversation between Catherine and Nick, and " . . . wild, strident argument[s] . . ." (pg. 35).

Sure, it was a party, and it was faithful to the novel in text, like with Myrtle's speech about how her and Tom met, but it didn't feel like a party, especially not one hosted by cheating lovers, in the midst of prohibition. 

By the end of the film I was left feeling a little like I had just wasted two hours of my life because the film didn't mean anything.  It looked like the 20s.  It sounded like the 20s.  But did it feel like the 20s?  The Gatsby that was supposed to have such a troubled, lowly past said all those words, but didn't show it in his acting.  The only major dynamic character was Nick, and even then I didn't understand or see much of his change.  If I hadn't read the book I would have been confused as to why Nick likes Gatsby, or has pity for him, or why he was so affected felt the need to move back home after that summer spent in West Egg.

While it gets the words right, the 1974 TGG doesn't do justice to the story; to the tale F. Scott Fitzgerald is telling in his novel.

The Importance of Adaptation.

I'm not going to lie, the film Adaptation is strange, but it does bring an interesting perspective to what it takes to adapt one work into another; and how difficult it can be.  Adaptation. centers on Charlie Kaufman, played by Nicolas Cage, a screenwriter tasked with adapting the book The Orchid Thief into a film.  He struggles endlessly with it--trying to figure out what to leave in, how to stay faithful to the story (or lack thereof), and how to make it something people actually want to watch.  Charlie insists on remaining faithful to the text--he doesn't want to rely any "typical Hollywood conventions," but wants to present the book as it is.

Adaptation is all around us, and is probably easiest seen at the movies.  Many films were once books or short stories or poems.  So, like Charlie Kaufman, a screen writer will decide what to leave in, what to write new, and what to forget about.  I imagine the task is incredibly daunting, especially if one is working with a work that seems to have no proper narrative structure.

The other day I was talking with my pastor about which version of the Bible he uses to preach.  One week he was gone, the text was a familiar one, but the default version for the slides was different from what everyone knew and what was in the pew Bibles.  A member got in contact with my pastor after that week and was outraged that he wasn't using the "correct" version (what was in the pews).  My pastor, as he does, remarked that all versions we read will be translations, because the Bible wasn't originally written in English--or even written at all!  This blew the member's mind.  He never thought about the Bible not being in English; about the Bible being translated and adapted for us.

Some scripture in Greek being translated to English              picture from cwoznicki.com

I'm not even going to get into how many times and ways the Bible has been adapted into other media...

Adaptation is important.
It changes how we see, think about, a read a work.  How we relate to it and talk to our friends about it.  How we understand it.

Stranger Than Fiction

Watching Stranger Than Fiction in a film class setting is fun because the film displays several key aspects of film, like different camera angles, changing of colors and spaces to evoke different moods, things like that.  Watching it in a film and literature class is even more exciting because of how the film speaks to the interplay between plot and story, author and director, reality and fiction.  But what is perhaps the most interesting, is watching Stranger Than Fiction in the context of a Christian institution because it speaks to some tough topics and everyday realities we face as people, and especially, as Christians.  Through different characters and situations, Stranger Than Fiction examines the idea of altruism/sacrifice and how our actions/interactions with others can affect or change us.

Harold Crick, the main character, has heard he is going to die soon, and spends much of the movie trying to avoid this "imminent death;" begging Karen Eiffel to change the ending of her book and keep him alive.  But in talking with his literary adviser, Professor Hilbert, Harold is asked to willingly die for the sake of Eiffel's book, as can be seen here:

This scene raises some serious questions for us as viewers.  What is the value of our own life?  How much can we sacrifice for another person?  What does it take for us to be willing to die for someone else?  

In this scene, Harold says, "I can change . . . " and he does change, but not to avoid his death, but to accept it.  How did this happen?

Harold started changing from the very beginning of the film when he heard Eiffel's narration.  He didn't change drastically right away, but he became more aware of himself and the world around him, more conscious of what he was thinking and doing.  He changed even more having to interact with Ana.  She is so opposite of him, she's free-spirited, opinionated, colorful.  Ana changes him a lot, especially in the day of the cookie scene.  After spending all day enveloped in her world, he comes down to leave and she's just finished pulling cookies out of the oven.

Right after the video cuts off he realized she baked the cookies specifically for him, and that he was "screwing everything up" by not accepting them.  

Throughout the day, Harold started to see Ana as a person, rather than just a auditee.  He learned her story, and watched her life.

Hearing Eiffel's narration, and spending time around Ana, gave Harold something to focus on other than himself, which is the key to his willingness to die the way Eiffel originally wrote.  Caring about someone else made him the type of person who would tell Eiffel to keep her story the way it was.  Harold became willing to sacrifice his life for Eeffel's story, so she became willing to sacrifice her story for his life.