Watched the Life of Pi today. Another movie which has been adapted from a best-selling, award winning novel. If you ask me to describe the movie in a single word, then the word I choose would be 'spectacle'. But this post is not about the movie, so I will stop myself here and change track.
Each time I walk out of a movie theater after watching such a movie (an adaption of a bestseller), I try to relate to whatever I saw on the screen with the images I drew up whilst I was reading the novel and each time I come away feeling a bit wanting when it comes to the depiction on the screen. I understand that when it comes to the medium of the cinema, you are actually surrendering your senses to the creative whims of the director and his crew and even after knowing this I watch the next adaption hoping that the views (images) which will be shown on the screen will blow me away. It is synonymous to the fact that each time I head to a 3D movie I go in with a hope that at least this movie will be an out an out 3D experience.
Quite contrary to this is the event where I read the novel after watching the movie. The prime example of this is the LOTR trilogy. After giving up multiple times on LOTR-1 (The Fellowship of the Ring), due to time constraints, yes there was a time in my life where time was of essence more so in my PL's :), I finally shelved the book until the first movie released. After watching the movie, with renewed interest I took up the first book and as I rifled through the pages, I couldn't but stop the images I had seen in the movie flashing right across my mind. I even tried re-reading passages, trying to conjure up an alternate setting, but it was just not possible. Alternately, for the remaining 2 parts, I had read the book before-hand and had my own set of imaginations to pit against what was going to be shown on the big screen. However the faces of the characters forever remained the same as that of the actors I had seen in the first part of the movie, which I couldn't help.
There has to be a very simple psychological reasoning for this I am sure. Even a fancy name coined for this exact phenomenon which I write about here. Just because I do not want to take home images of locales which somebody else has thought off, I think I will be reading the books before watching their 'soon to be made into' major motion pictures.
Note for Tom Cruise fans: If at all you like watching Tom Cruise (let me confess that I do), we are going to see him next in JACK REACHER. Jack Reacher is a character developed by the author Lee Child. Pick any Jack Reacher novel and you will understand why Tom Cruise is just not an ideal pick to play Jack Reacher. Even if that be I am going to watch the movie. But just something for you to think about if at all you do end up reading Lee Child ever :) I dig Lee Child!!!
Let me leave you with an image I bumped into about how hollywood converts novels into movies. Not that I subscribe to this view per se but its funny nonetheless.
P.S: Now Tom Cruise is out defending his selection as Jack Reacher :P
http://music.yahoo.com/news/tom-cruise-defends-role-jack-reacher-031110277--finance.html
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