From Page to Screen

In Which I Consider the Literary Adaptation

Like many other readers who enjoy movies, I often watch literary adaptations. Often, the conversation pivots to book vs. film: of course the book must be better!¹ So much is lost from page to screen! That’s not a choice The Author (read: I) would have made! And so on, and so forth, and what have you. The conversation often spirals down to the same dredge every time, of watching a new adaptation with book and pen in hand, ready to downgrade directorial choices based on “fidelity” to the original text.

I think there’s a better way to discuss literary adaptations. What if we viewed adaptations as what they truly are: interpretations? Texts exist to be read, which means they must be interpreted. Sometimes, our fellow readers make interpretations that may seem blasphemous. Much of the time, other interpretations are enlightening. Hearing other points of view makes us question why we hold our own. We can glean good ideas, cast light on an overlooked corner of the story, or reckon with a difficult passage when we interact with other interpretations. Adaptations, as interpretive vehicles, can serve the same purpose, expanding our understandings through screenwriters’ choices, the actors’ expressions, and the set designers’ eyes.

So, is the book always “better?” Or…is it just a different medium?

I Only Love That Which They Defend: The Lord of the Rings vs. The Hobbit

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) has proven a mainstay in the adaptation world. While opinions abound, sentiment is largely positive. Changes had to be made for the screen, even for the extended editions.² The effect of Tolkien’s story remains, even if Jackson glories in violence where WWI veteran Tolkien did not.³ Jackson and his team accepted The Lord of the Rings for what it is: a fantasy epic charged with compassion, integrity, and hope.

The crownless again shall be king: The Return of the King (New Line Cinema, 2003)

Not so for The Hobbit (2012-2014), based on a children’s story set in an unfinished fantasy world. When Jackson turned his directorial sights to The Hobbit, he wanted another The Lord of the Rings. Jackson tried to make an odd little hobbit in the image of an ageless elf. (Some fans love it; while I don’t hate it, I was disappointed.) The first time, they loved that which they were producing. The second time, they tried to make the source material into something it wasn’t.

I know The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) is a good adaptation, not because it’s critically acclaimed, or because it still watches well over 20 years later, or because the moviemaking ingredients baked into the most delectable concoction. The passion of the filmmakers for the widely-loved source material yielded a product that expands my experience of the story. I know it’s a good adaptation because it makes me want to re-read the books every time I watch it.

You Do Us Justice, Indeed: Persuasion (1995)

Adaptations of Jane Austen’s work are legion, and many of them are excellent. However, Roger Michell’s 1995 adaptation of Persuasion is the only Austen adaptation that makes me feel like I’m watching real people in the early 1800s.⁴ Perhaps this is because makeup use is minimal, or that the sets and costumes look lived-in, not flashy or shabby. While some adaptations can be thoroughly enjoyed without the source material, Persuasion (1995) shines when watched with the book’s narration in mind.

Loving longest when hope is gone: Persuasion (BBC & Sony Pictures Classics, 1995)

The humor in Persuasion lies in its subtext, its pathos in emotional restraint. Anne Elliot is not outspoken like Marianne Dashwood nor an individualist like Elizabeth Bennet. Anne is a closed book—except to Austen’s reader. In Persuasion (1995), Amanda Root shows Anne’s inner life through composure rather than boldness. It’s a story about a woman who does not hold her heart on her sleeve. We must enter Anne’s inner world to experience the tender drama of her life. Michell and the adaptors of Persuasion (1995) entered the exquisite and utterly quiet passion of Anne, which is why it translates to the screen.

Minds and Souls as Well as Hearts: Artistic Liberties

While Persuasion (1995) and The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) must elide a few characters or story beats, they tell the same stories in the same formats as their source texts. They do it well. Yet, telling the story in the same way the author did is not the only criterion for a good adaptation. Adapting, as interpreting, is a creative act.

All the world’s a stage: Anna Karenina (Universal Pictures & Focus Features, 2012)

Anna Karenina (2012) relies on a creative conceit to tell the story. Joe Wright and his team interpret Anna’s life as a performance, using stage-play elements to imagine the story. While reading the novel, I also interpreted Anna as playing for her audience, trying to engineer responses from people by acting. She chose to fill her low self-esteem by feeding on reactions from others. In some scenes, Anna’s flirtation with Vronsky wasn’t even for Vronsky. It was for the observers. While other characters in the story, like Levin and Dolly, grow into their true selves, Anna devolves into her false self.

Wright’s interpretation of Anna as an actress sharpened my reading of the novel. The stage sets that rise and fall at key moments in the story display Russian high society as a performance rather than a truthful way of living. Anna and Vronsky live in their own world while in public, making a self-conscious tableau vivant for the other partygoers, which Wright shows through filmography. The camera interprets Anna Karenina as much as the script. Does this adaptation capture the sweeping drama that is Anna Karenina? Not quite. Two hours cannot contain 800+ pages. Yet, it successfully envisions an essential aspect of the story.

Genius burns: Little Women (Sony Pictures, 2019)

Little Women (2019) changes the linear storytelling of Louisa May Alcott’s novel. For all its merits, Little Women the novel begins as an episodic, slightly forgettable girls’ story, which evolves into a multifaceted exploration of virtue, ambition, and womanhood. Alcott wrote from her experience, but hardly wrote an autobiography. Greta Gerwig, the adaptor, told the March sisters’ story as Jo’s memories, contrasting her golden vision of the past with the harsher realities of her adult life. This undercuts the heartwarming elements on which previous adaptors relied, making room for additional depth.

As a lifelong Alcott fan, I thrilled at the moment when Gerwig drew forth Rose Campbell’s words from Jo’s mouth.⁵ Rose in Bloom may never make it to the big screen—it’s a love triangle between first cousins—but Gerwig distilled the essence of that novel into Jo’s unforgettable dialogue. That showed a level of research, not to mention love for Alcott, that few adaptors demonstrate. Though I have little to say against other Little Women adaptations, Gerwig’s 2019 version captured Alcott’s genius in a way other screen versions don’t.⁶ When I watched Little Women (2019), I knew I was seeing the vision of someone who loved Alcott as much as I do.

When adaptors encounter a text with the fullness of their creativity, we have the chance to experience the story in a new way. Accepting the complexities of someone else’s story while trying to tell it yourself is difficult, but that’s the task of adaptation. Adapting a book into a movie brings it to life for many who wouldn’t have found the story otherwise. It invites new generations to experience a story instead of dismissing it as passé. It beckons readers to interpret our favorite stories afresh, to see our best-loved tales through someone else’s eyes.

We Shall Not Cease from Exploration

Not every adaptation benefits from my generosity. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011) cheated me and all other readers of Lisa See, because the storytellers inserted a modern storyline instead of dwelling on a friendship between women during the final decades of China’s Qing dynasty. Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story (2000) remains anathema to me. L. M. Montgomery’s Anne Shirley is simply not in that film! But if I eschewed all adaptations because of a few bad apples, I’d miss out on an awfully⁷ good bushel.

Mathematically, all of light is invisible: All the Light We Cannot See (Netflix, 2023)

A few recent adaptations give me hope for the genre: All the Light We Cannot See (2023) and A Gentleman in Moscow (2024) are marvelous interpretations of their source material.⁸ After reading The Color Purple I look forward to seeing different tellings of the story by different generations. There are also stories I’d love to see make it to screen: imagine a Roger Michell-esque treatment of Mansfield Park; a meditative miniseries of an Elizabeth Goudge novel; anything by Louise Erdrich. Even if they don’t turn out to my liking, my readings of the books can’t be spoiled by another’s pale vision. I’ll continue hoping for robust interpretations.

Adaptations give us the chance to experience our favorite stories, retold as by a friend. Comparing books to movies is like comparing apples in an orchard to apples in a pie. Both are autumnal delights, but they are not identical ways to consume apples. Most days I’d rather have a fresh, crisp apple, but every once in a while a slice of apple pie fills corners an apple cannot. Maybe I’m as eager for good stories as I am for apples, but I like both.

1. Because reading a book is morally superior to watching a movie! (This is sarcasm.)

2. I’m still wishing my favorite line had made it onscreen: “The hands of a king are the hands of a healer.”

3. “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” Faramir, The Two Towers. Unfortunately, these words only make it into the movie via a choir singing in Elvish.

4. Ciaran Hinds had the advantage of looking like he’d spent time at sea, while 2007’s Rupert Penry-Jones had a landlubber’s complexion. I decided against viewing the 2022 adaptation after viewing the trailer.

5. From Rose in Bloom chapter 1: “…we've got minds and souls as well as hearts; ambition and talents as well as beauty and accomplishments; and we want to live and learn as well as love and be loved. I'm sick of being told that is all a woman is fit for! I won't have anything to do with love till I prove that I am something besides a housekeeper and baby-tender!” Compare to Jo March in Little Women (2019): “Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for.”

6. Now, if someone wanted to mash up Alcott’s novel Little Women, in which the March girls never go to church, with its Puritan literary framework, the allegory Pilgrim’s Progress, I’m not saying it would work, but I am saying I would watch it.

7. “Don’t say ‘awful,’ Jo, it’s slang!” Meg in Little Women (1994). In the novel, Meg uses “awful” three times, more than any other character.

8. Even though All the Light changed the ending and A Gentleman left out my favorite scene, I extend mercy.