Is There A Right Way To Do An Adaptation? #1

Last Thursday, Game Informer began their new Super Replay on Resident Evil, yet there was a twist to this one: They were doing not only the 1996 PS1 version but also the 2002 Gamecube remake. It was a good introduction for me on all of the differences in both games, as the remake is a completely different monster from the original game. There is this sense that when they were working on it, the people behind it knew that it couldn't be the same game, so they took the mansion, added a bunch of rooms, rearranged puzzles and situations, and making it not feel like the same thing that the general public already played six years prior. This is maybe what I consider the right way to do a remake, executed to near perfection that should be the standard for remakes in any medium. Yet why am I talking about a remake of a video game when the main discussion of this piece is on adapting things into movies and such? Well, a remake could be considered an adaptation in the sense that it is taking a previous work and turning it into something different, so maybe it does fit.

That was not the only inspiration for making this post a thing, as during this past weekend, I bought two movies due to Barnes and Nobles' Criterion sale, those being the 1981 Brian De Palma flick Blow Out and the 1991 David Cronenberg film Naked Lunch, the latter being the other reason behind this. I am not familiar myself with the 1959 book of the same name by William S. Burroughs, but from what I could tell from the little research that I did, this is really only half of the story that the movie was trying to tell. Others have tried to adapt the book with no success, even Burroughs himself, that it would make sense that there would be assumptions that a direct adaptation would be incredibly difficult, let alone impossible, and Cronenberg kind of proved that point yet he was still able to make a movie out of it, by taking the contents of the book and combining it with the events in Burroughs' real life during the time he started writing the book, making the work into something more metatextual. Now, after the first time watching the movie, I don't really have much of a grasp on what the themes of the movie really are, although I guess there could be influence on the writing process, as William said himself that the accidental death of his wife Joan was the main reason why he started writing to begin with and this is how it works in the movie, yet to him it's just writing reports. 

The thought into this coincides with the idea behind the Resident Evil remake, on that the best way to adapt a previous work could be to not go 100% straight and just try to make the work into something different that you call your own creation and not just putting someone else's ideas into another medium. This leads me to talk about the adaptations of a writer whose work probably has more movies made about it in the past 30+ years than almost any other: Stephen King. Starting with the 1976 film, Carrie, there always appears to be a new adaptation of one of his works coming out every year or so, either as a film on the big screen, made-for-TV movie, or even a show (regular or mini series), to the point where some of them are even getting remade themselves in recent years. The first one I could talk about is the third of his works to be adapted (after the aforementioned Carrie and the TV movie Salem's Lot)  is the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film The Shining. This was a movie that King himself hated when he initially saw it, being disappointed in how some of the themes of the book and the supernatural elements were taken out in favor of making something different. The easiest way to attribute the lack of the supernatural was due to Kubrick's own skepticism regarding the subject, with that leading to how the force that was turning Jack Torrance into a monster was not partially caused by the evil in the Overlook using his weaknesses to gain control of him, but more due to just Jack suffering from the isolation and thus bringing out the true self within him, the part of him that was always there. Now, we could compare this to the 1997 TV adaptation that King had a direct involvement in the creation of the miniseries, and it becomes apparent easily that it was going to be a more direct adaptation of the source material more than the Kubrick film was. And so all of the themes that he wanted to get at are there in full force, yet it feels like there was something wrong with the execution. Some of the supernatural elements are too much into focus, and there was also the large amount of CGI effects which look incredibly dated, making a lot of the scenes that were supposed to be scary and such more hilarious than anything.

While I could go on with King adaptations (and maybe go into some of my favorites another time), that might take up a huge chunk of the post and even has with just that part about The Shining, I might focus on an adaptation this time that not only diverted slightly from the source material while also having the writer behind the book directly involved, and it's also one that I probably have the most knowledge of in this discussion so far. That movie being The Princess Bride. The book that the movie was based on was written in 1973 by William Goldman and it was a rather interesting read after having watched the movie many times before, as there is some sort of framing device yet they are completely different. When the book begins, it revolves around a fictional version of the author reminiscing about the S. Morgenstern book and wanting to introduce it to his son as he hopes that he would fall in love with it as he did as a kid. Unfortunately, his son doesn't like it and the fictional Goldman sees why, as when he was told this story by his grandfather, he had heard a very abridged version of the story (a comparison I could make here is in the episode of Black Books when Bernard and Manny try writing a children's book and the first draft Bernard writes is thousands of pages long) and the rest of that framing device begins to focus on his attempt at reducing a lot of the material down into something more easily digestible, even throwing in a few fourth wall breaking moments into the story as well, mostly as he says things regarding what he cut out and some of his personal memories of the book.

Of course there are differences from the source material to the movie although there are not as many but those that were are due to just an inability to put the images to the screen, such as the Zoo of Death, which was Prince Humperdink's own personal hunting grounds with the bottom floor being reserved for the most dangerous game: man. That man being Westley. It also goes into more depth into the story behind Inigo Montoya and his quest for revenge, along with Fezzik's origins, and the former is something I really wish had been in the movie. Also the ending is more open ended, and has another fourth wall moment where he writes that he assumes that the four of them got away fine. I'm going to assume that people have seen the movie version of The Princess Bride and kind of skip really getting into it but it is always good to hear that the writer of a book is the main screenwriter of the movie, because it means that it could turn out better since there is a first hand experience with the material. It also doesn't hurt much that Goldman himself was a two time Academy Award winner for his screenplays as well has having adapted some of his own written work before, such as Marathon Man and Magic. I also could go into his involvement with Stephen King works as he worked on Misery, Dolores Claiborne, and Dreamcatcher, or even more I might just focus an entire post or two on the work of William Goldman, but that is probably for another day. As for now, I'll try and continue this topic another time when I find some more interesting adaptations I could talk about.

The Depths of Pretension #2: Eyes Without A Face

Now here is a movie that I got introduced to just by the cover of it. And really, it is a pretty wonderful cover that kind of is the movie in a nutshell as it is the masked face of Christiane Genessier, who is the main driving force of what happens throughout the film itself, actions done by her father in order to make her life better. Eyes Without A Face also kind of got me intrigued as I was looking up the film in the Criterion site and was reading an article where Edgar Wright listed off his top 10 films in the collection and this movie was listed as number four. The way he talked about it was rather funny, as he was introduced to the film by his father who would tell his that the movie was the greatest horror film he ever saw, yet could not remember the name of the movie, which Wright himself would not be able to find out until many years later. The article itself is a fun read (http://www.criterion.com/explore/161-edgar-wright-s-top-10 if you are interested in it) and provided a great insight into one of my favorite directors and some of the movies he listed I'll probably cover very soon in a future article, those probably being Blow Out and Rushmore.

Now, getting back to the movie itself, the 1960 French film Eyes Without A Face is the story about a father who tries his hardest to fix his daughter's disfigured face caused by a car accident some time before. And his solution is to kidnap and kill young women, using their facial tissue in skin grafts for the treatment. Now in this light, the movie might be construed as a generic slasher film that shouldn't even be touching the likes of the Criterion Collection (which does have some baffling selections, like Armageddon) but really, the horror is underplayed, since as a whole there are only a handful of victims in the film, as in really only four, one of which had already died prior to the opening credits. A good portion of it focuses on the doctor's obsession with getting the procedure done right, having failed numerous times before as well as Christiane's disillusionment regarding getting a new face due to not only how the skin gets acquired but also because the grafts reject the new host (the scenes where they show the photos of the skin graft over time failing is one that I really could not praise enough with how well it works in ways I really cannot explain).

There are also a few moments in the film that do kind of get into the life Christiane had before the accident, where we are introduced to her former fiance Jacques during her fake funeral, going into how her father had her hidden since then and that the body they had buried was the victim from the beginning of the movie. The plot thread only comes in a few times where she calls him twice, only saying his name on the second call before hanging up. This does come into play towards the end but not really all that much. There is also the character of Louise, Dr Genessier's assistant in all of this, who mostly does it due to her feeling of owing him as she had gone through a similar process that Christiane is going through in that she was disfigured herself, which the doctor fixed aside from a few scars that are covered with a pearl choker. It is hard to say what the character of Louise stands for in the movie as she is in a situation that really does not seem like would really require her attention, and one wonders why she feels the need to aid the doctor in the killing and disposing of women, yet she does a good enough job at being a surrogate mother for Christiane which in of itself is good, as she often tries to give her support to keep going through with the skin grafts despite all the failures. The situation with Louise is one that I could also see being mirrored by Christiane if she was ever able to get a successful skin graft, as how she is technically dead and the only people who know she is alive are the doctor and his assistant, so she could probably get a new identity and live a somewhat normal life, as normal as having been isolated from the world for quite some time as well as having been part of a few kidnappings and murders can be.

One of the things that did kind of surprise me about this movie was that it was based on a book with the same name, which unfortunately I do not have that much information on at the moment, and that the tone of the book is rather different mainly due to the director having to try and get the censor boards off his back. Some of the things that did get removed were the amount of gore, which in the film is very minimal aside from a few scenes, the torture of animals which is implied in the film and the focus being more on the doctor in the book. The whole thing with the doctor was that due to German censors was for some reason upset with mad scientist characters (are a lot of stereotypical mad scientists German?) and putting more of a focus on Christiane would make the doctor more of a sympathetic character. And it does work to an extent, as it shows that despite all of the terrible things he does, it is out of the love for his daughter. Although, it has also left him blind to her growing apathy and disgust towards the whole thing and whether or not the procedure will ever work for her.

It is rather hard to rank this movie among it's peers at the time as I have not seen that many movies like this that were around then. The most generic comparison would be to compare it to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, which is kind of a easy one especially since the writing team of this movie did write the novelization of Vertigo. I also have a very little vocabulary when it comes to French film making as this is kind of my introduction to it and the only other movies that I have seen that have been French have been Blue is the Warmest Color and The Vanishing, which probably are not in the same category as Eyes Without A Face. Yet, I have to say that it has gotten me interested in it and has me hoping that I can find myself engrossed in those as I was in this film, as it is kind of a strange type of film, as it is kind of horror, suspense, and all that and yet none of those things. And there is always that eeriness of having someone whose face is covered in a white, expressionless mask and no clue is left as to what is underneath it.