page turners to screen dreams: adaptations from book to film
It’s hard to deny the power of a good adaptation. Growing up in a generation where there was a good ten years where I saw many of my favorite books adapted for the screen in varying degrees of ‘close enough to be enjoyed on its own’ to ‘single handedly killed the vhs industry’ (iykyk), I have an appreciation for adaptations done not-so-well. However, this also means that when a story I love is adapted well, I appreciate it all the more, two of my favorites being Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs and Henry Selick’s Coraline.
Starting with Silence, the key to this adaptation lies in the screenwriting of Ted Tally. While Thomas Harris’s ability to write interesting and three dimensional female characters who exist without being defined by the men around them is questionable, the combination of Demme’s direction, Tally’s writing, and Jodie Foster’s performance as the iconic Clarice Starling make her a fully fleshed and believably interesting character. I was a fan of the film long before reading the book, and became even more of a fan afterward reading both book and Tally’s screenplay. Some of my favorite moments in the film are ones where Tally lifted dialogue directly from the text of Harris’s novel, often with little to no change. In particular, Jack Crawford’s line “You spook easily, Starling?” has always been a moment that I enjoy, particularly because of the silence surrounding the moment as Clarice takes in the scene of Crawford’s office and the crime scene photos of the Buffalo Bill murders. This is an incredibly strong book-to-film adaptation that’s strength lies in the moments that were taken directly from the source material, and were interpreted flawlessly by Tally, Demme, and the cast as a whole. Overall, Silence is something that I would consider a near perfect interpretation of Harris’s original text, a trend that Tally continued with the screenplay for the prequel Red Dragon.
There is also the matter of changes that must be made to make a book more suitable for the screen. For this, we can look to Henry Selick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. While not my first Gaiman book (it was Stardust, and at 9 or 10 I was most assuredly too young to be reading it), this one remains my favorite (one day I hope to get my illustrated copy signed by both Neil himself and Chris Riddell). There would have been no way for Coraline to be on the big screen without making several changes. In the novella, most of the story is told through the titular Coraline’s inner monologue, as she spends much of the story wandering the grounds of her new home completely alone. Since spending nearly two hours watching a child talk to herself wouldn’t necessarily make for a very interesting movie - at least in this context, Selick introduced the character of Wybie. He also tied Wybie further into the story by changing one of the ghost children from - what I assume is - the child of a faerie to his grandmother’s identical twin sister. The film, while not an exact adaptation, retains every single element of Gaiman’s original story that makes the novel so intensely frightening. The changes made allow the film to be read easier on the screen, and for the audience to watch Coraline interact with the world around her in a way that feels more realistic, whether she’s in her own home or in the world of the Other Mother. Selick’s writing sells the image of a truly lonely girl, who - while surrounded by people - feels isolated in a new and unfamiliar environment across the country, and abandoned and neglected by her parents.
Adaptations, good or bad, are created to be enjoyed. While some are good enough to be considered something separate from the source material, some are certainly not (LXG I’m looking directly into your eyes). Nevertheless, I feel like the adaptations I’ve mentioned here are among the best there are.
