BBC "Les Misérables"
I've been trying to identify just why I find the current Andrew Davies adaptation for "Les Misérables" so unsatisfying, which is hard to put into words without coming across as just another 'oh no, he dared to alter one word of the Sacred Text' rant. Save that it happens to be several years since I reread the book (for the purposes of writing my AU-Cosette story), and what I'm getting are feelings of general wrongness which turn out to be corroborated when I do go to look up the relevant sections of the novel, but are not the sort of verbatim recall that can identify every little deviation.
See, I do know about adaptation. I understand perfectly well that you can't reproduce even something as short as the first Harry Potter book on screen in every detail exact as it was printed (and in fact, those films might have been better films if they'd been a bit less constrained by the anticipated expectations of millions of screaming fans). Putting a novel on screen is a question of conveying the spirit of the story, not every incident, and that often involves writing new scenes between the characters or else streamlining bits of the plot because internal agonising doesn't come over well on screen (or simply to shorten it).
But what I'm getting from this adaptation is the sense of a writer who thinks he is taking the chance to improve on the perceived deficiencies of the original. ( Read more... )
See, I do know about adaptation. I understand perfectly well that you can't reproduce even something as short as the first Harry Potter book on screen in every detail exact as it was printed (and in fact, those films might have been better films if they'd been a bit less constrained by the anticipated expectations of millions of screaming fans). Putting a novel on screen is a question of conveying the spirit of the story, not every incident, and that often involves writing new scenes between the characters or else streamlining bits of the plot because internal agonising doesn't come over well on screen (or simply to shorten it).
But what I'm getting from this adaptation is the sense of a writer who thinks he is taking the chance to improve on the perceived deficiencies of the original. ( Read more... )