Adaptations

We saw this last night. I refuse to call it anything other than 'Northern Lights'. On the way home, discussions do what discussions do: ensue. Mainly about the pitfalls and pitbulls of adaptation. The film was OK, but nowhere near the punch of the book. How can you squeeze the plot and character details of a novel into two and a half hours of film? More importantly - why would you bother?
A book has its own pace and narrative arc, not to mention (what is oft forgot) it is composed of words. Not just dialogues. As we've been at pains to pedantically insist, a screnplay should consist only of what you can see and what you can hear. That would make most novels dry as... dust (in the old sense). The opinion was voiced (and it's one I hear more and more) that TV, especially the long series form, is much better adapted to telling stories. You don't have to be so plot driven, you can allow little gracenotes, twists and turns that don't seem to get you anywhere (the Hollywood maxim is 'move the story along') but which add layers and nuances to the work.
There's also something tempting about the episodic structure - having to wait to find out what happens next. Cinema used to have it in the days of the Saturday morning serial, and its cliffhanging endings. I suppose more recent sequels try to achieve the same effect, but as they're all based on pre-existing stories, books usually, there's no real sense of suspense.
Another problem with the pure plot 'surprise' is that you can only feel it once. The secret of Darth Vader is great... once. The films of M. Night Shyalaman are all great (or at least OK) one time only. But we have all moved away from only seeing films once. DVDs and repeat viewings allow us to notice all those little layers (I almost said 'crocodiles') in back, layers which turn out to be the substance of the show. Not every series needs to be a puzzle, but every series, every film I think, needs those layers.
So, as we de-freeze our booties and sit round the table to continue with 'House of War' (working title). Let's think about how to build these layers and details in from the start. We don't necessarily need big epiphanies, or astonishing plot surprises... we need something much harder to find: affecting stories and characters we care about. Details both visual and aural that we can discover on the second or third viewing. Obviously, we'll have to really think out things like lighting, framing and camera moves to add to the expressiveness. It's a long trail.
But what films like 'The Golden Compass' (there, I said it!) show us is that the overcomplex, 'good story' does not a great film make. I'll pass on the fact that they omitted the very surprising and ambiguous ending of the book for a more neutral 'happy-ish' one in the film.
(There was another , more radical proposal, too, in light of the writers' strike: a 5-year moritorium on all adaptations, spin-offs and sequels. My, how that would smart. Thanks to Robin for these thoughts.
Lest this seem a churlish early moring rant against Hollywood or mainstream works, I confess that I am dying for the next season of LOST to begin. Where can they possibly take it? Back home?
See you soon.