Reply #42: I feel the same [View All]

[sammythecat]

I'm trying to think of why that is and the only thing I can come up with is that in Rice's books, for instance, a major part of the charm was her writing style. She took her time in setting up a scene and did it in an interesting and entertaining way. I think it's hard to linger on the ambiance of a scene in a film without being boring. The details in a film can't be properly described, they can only be shown.

I'm not very satisfied with what I just wrote but it's the best I can do. Maybe a better example for me to describe is PBS's (I think?) adaptation of Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles". It was pretty good, I enjoyed it, but it was a shallow soap opera compared to the book. I'm almost completely lacking in the poetry appreciation department, but reading "Tess" was almost like reading poetry I think. He could spend a couple paragraphs describing a snail making its way on a garden wall at dusk in order to set a mood, and it was mesmerizing. There just isn't time for that in a movie. There's the film producer's "Tess" and there's Thomas Hardy's "Tess". Two completely different things.