Six Films Based on Unadaptable Books
Lolita (1962): That cinema and literature are two distinctly unique mediums has never scared off filmmakers desperate for an idea. In fact, forget that Stanley Kubrick’s noble take on Lolita concerned pedophilia. How could any filmmaker mimic Vladimir Nabokov’s impossibly lyrical and eloquent prose?
Ulysses (1967): Director Joseph Strick—who later did Henry Miller’s similarly unadaptable Tropic of Cancer —sought to prove that there wasn’t much story in James Joyce’s dense novel. His take features such hair-raising cinematic exploits as Stephen Daldry moping near the sea, Leopold Bloom placing an advertisement and both characters, drunk, miterating in a garden.
Dune (1984): On page, Frank Herbert’s epic is little but characters explaining their future luddite world. Which is great as something you pore over, not so great when you’ve got more than two hours of sound and image. And yet there are three adaptations—one in the works. The first was a box office fiasco in which David Lynch upchucked odd, bizarro images (e.g., brain-man with a vaginal mouth) but got tangled in endless expository dialogue.
Time Regained (1999): Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time has only attracted films from either of its sides: Swann in Love (1984) took a hilariously banal stab at Volume One , while experimental filmmaker Raoul Ruiz took the opposite approach with Volume Seven , which is so like the book it will immediately lose all but Proust scholars.
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005): How best to tackle Laurence Sterne’s work of ur-postmodernism, itself about its own making? By making a movie about how it’s impossible to adapt? Brilliant.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (2009): In his directorial debut, John Krasinski tries to turn a short story collection by David Foster Wallace into a roaming, monologue-heavy cine-essay on pungent maleness. And almost succeeds! At least these are all single, contained narratives.
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1. Anonymous said... on Nov 11, 2009 at 12:51PM
“Probably obviously, but Watchmen, Naked Lunch, and Adaptation could make the list too.”
2. Matt L. said... on Nov 13, 2009 at 10:02PM
“How about "Breakfast of Champions"?”