I watched two movies I didn't like last night. Winter Sleepers, the second film by one of my favorite directors, and Adaptation, which has been praised by many critics I admire. Winter Sleepers just sucked. The filming was amazing, but I didn't care about the characters at all and couldn't figure out why they did almost anything they did in the film (eating did make sense, since it important for survival and all.) Adaptation is trickier, especially since it is well done. Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman intrigue me and I know I will continue to see their movies in the future because they do have that sort of spark of brilliance. The film didn't sit right with me though because it's egocentric. I don't know of any other way they could have done it though, so I am just going to maintain that I just didn't like it. I did find this review helpful. What I am trying to poke at here is somehow summed up in the following excerpt from said review: "As the critic Robin Wood has said, himself apologizing for stating such a simple truth, "Literature is literature. Film is film." He goes on to say that there is no such thing as a faithful adaptation, since "the greatness of [great literature] resides in the writer's grasp of the potentialities of language" -- subtleties that can't be reproduced in film."
Posted by Deke at February 22, 2004 03:50 PM