I'm finding it quite sad that a lot of the book lovers whose content I have been enjoying since before the AMC show came out are so disappointed so far by the adaptation of TVL.
I am sad that they are sad because I know that some of them have loved these books for far longer than even I have, and I have loved them for more of my life than I had lived to date before I read them. It is tough to build things up in our heads and then it not turn out as we expected.
I am also very much of the mind that because so many of us have been adapting these written stories to visual in our heads for so long that it risks us not seeing the value of an adaptation made for a different era.
I feel like in a weird way, it also devalues Anne's written work.
Yes, things are being cut out, truncated, and altered. I do genuinely feel that the writers are telling the core emotional story of The Vampire Chronicles, but with a key difference to how Anne did it. They have removed much of that layer of her sweeping historical fiction and instead added in a more modern and psychological layer about how the way we tell our stories both reflects AND shapes how we feel about ourselves and our lives. That's very interesting, and very, very valuable.
I myself am happy to sacrifice seeing wolves in the snow, and twelve pages of philosophy with Alessandra, and the golden moment, for this thorough exploration of how our narrative of ourselves does and does not serve us.
Because here is the thing. The fundamental. We are NOT ACTUALLY losing out on the wolves, and Alessandra, and letters from Eleni, and the Commedia Dell'Arte, and Hell's Bells and all the rest. We have them. We will ALWAYS have them, rendered on the page by the most relentlessly descriptive of writers.
I don't think it COULD be committed to screen in a satisfying way for people who have read the granular detail of it all over and over again, some having done so since the 1980s. I have that fight with the wolves in my head, beat-for-beat. What could possibly compare?
Even with these incredible performances, nothing is actually going to make us feel the way the inn and Our Conversation made us feel when we read it first. And most especially not if we first encountered it as sad, confused teenagers.
Anne gave us that, in her inimitable Anne way. We will always have it. We don't need it onscreen exactly as she wrote it. We can reach for the book any time. Picking up the paperback in the sitting room and flicking to our favourite passage is faster than booting up an episode of TV.
I have four favourite novels. One is a piece of 1920s high modernism which cannot be adapted at all. Two are pieces of historical fiction, and the films of both are faithful adaptations with great performances, but which feel very flat compared to a reread. The interiority of the characters is the key in both texts (one a very close first person, the other an almost free indirect style omniscient third person). It's not present in the onscreen portrayals.
The fourth is The Vampire Lestat.
I like this adaptation more than the other two. Not because it is more faithful. It isn’t more faithful. But we didn't need what Anne did a second time in a different medium. Anne did it perfectly the first time. Instead this is going something new, utilising the medium of film to its most interesting structural potential to do something different.
We will always have the book. This remix is giving us extra. I think that is to be appreciated.
