Of books and movies

Is the movie ever better than the book?

I was asked that question by a friend after my review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, after revealing that I had tried to read the book and hadn't really liked it.

It feels like a given that it never is, but I believe that's because of observational bias rather than the intrinsic quality of movies. You only see the movie if you loved the book–why go see a movie based on a book you didn't enjoy? But on the other hand, if you loved the book, the movie is bound to disappoint. They will have changed something that you liked, or left out something important.

What's more, they have no choice. French filmmaker Robert Bresson is famous for saying "a film is born three times: when it is written, when it is shot, and when it is edited." If the director sticks too closely to the book ("when it is written"), he misses the opportunities provided by the second and third births. If fans of the book insist that he do so, they will, perversely, get a movie that satisfies them less rather than more.

A rule of thumb is that a script will take one minute per page, so even a long movie probably only has a script of around 150 pages–and of course a screenplay has many times the whitespace of a book.

So there's just a lot fewer words in a screenplay than in a book.

On top of that, much of a book can't be turned into a movie at all. A character's internal monologues can be conveyed by voiceover, but as all beginning screenwriters learn, voiceover is a clumsy, sledgehammersy tool in a movie. A book might spend a page describing a character's moral views, or his leather jacket, which simply won't translate directly to the screen at all.

There are other aspects of books that are difficult to translate. For instance, a book like The Hobbit can comfortably accommodate a cast of fifteen main characters (thirteen dwarves, a Hobbit, and a wizard). The seven dwarves in Snow White are enough of a challenge, and as a child I was convinced one of them was named Sneaky; who could possibly keep track of a baker's dozen? If you're reading the book, and you confuse Fili and Kili or Dori, Nori, and Ori, you can always stop for a minute to think about it, or even go back a few pages and review. In film, obviously, this is impossible. As Woody Allen famously said about relationships, so it is in film–it's like a shark, it has to keep moving forward or it dies.

When you put it like that, it makes film seem like a very poor format compared to paper, and it's completely understandable why every film pales in comparison to a novel.

But that's only if you insist on judging a film by the plots and the words. When film is scanned, it's usually stored at a resolution of over 2,000 lines, which means there are about 8 million pixels in every frame, and 24 frames per second. If you consider the amount of data passing before your eyes when you're watching a movie, it turns out that a picture is actually worth far more than a thousand words.

So often, in translating a book to the screen, dialogue and description must ideally become image and sound. 

This is why some of the best moments in the film of The Hobbit are barely in the book at all. For instance, the Storm Giants merit only a passing reference in the book, but their battle is one of the most visually stunning parts of the movie. The trouble is that the reason it's only a passing reference in the book is that the Storm Giants don't really play any part in the narrative. In order to justify turning this scene into a major part of the movie, the script really needed to give them a narrative role, and it doesn't do that. So it's a stunning set-piece, but it stops the movie dead until it concludes.

On the other hand, the prologue, which has been taken from the appendices to The Return of the King and therefore doesn't really "belong" in The Hobbit at all, is not only visually stunning but also helps stitch the narrative together by making it clear what the dwarves who show up on Bilbo's doorstep are after. So from my perspective this is a much more successful example of adapting a book to film.

The prologue also contains a brilliant moment of acting that goes almost unnoticed. The dwarf king Thrór becomes extremely rich and the other races are shown paying fealty to him, but it is clear from the expression on the elf-king's face that he is not pleased. Then, when the dragon Smaug comes, the elf-king turns his troops away and does not help the dwarves. 

The voiceover doesn't explain this decision, because it doesn't have to. It also provides an explanation for why elves and dwarves don't like each other–and it's not in the books. I don't think this is sacrilege, unless you regard the source novel as scripture.

Finally, I'm going to commit hubris by suggesting one way in which the movie misses a golden opportunity to improve on the book. Films are a multidimensional art form. I've praised the effects in the Storm Giant sequence, and the acting in the Erebor prologue. Now (since I'm an editor), I'd like to demonstrate how a simple edit could have made a noticeable improvement to the story.

In both film and book, it's kind of a mystery why Bilbo suddenly decides to join the dwarves, after they have ravaged his house and mocked him. In the book, Gandalf suddenly appears and simply urges Bilbo out the door, and he goes. It gives the impression that he joins the company simply because he doesn't have the stones to tell Gandalf to get lost.

But the book does contain one important clue. The night before, the dwarves are singing a song about their home, and Tolkien writes: "As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves."

Composer Howard Shore has composed a beautiful, mystery-shrouded tune for "Misty Mountains Cold," and while Bilbo does appear to be listening to it rather intently, the film doesn't quite connect this moment to his decision to leave. As it is, Bilbo gets up, notices the contract that the dwarves have left on the mantel, and dashes out the door. What if, as he picked up the piece of paper, an echo of "Misty Mountains Cold" played under it? This would allow the song, which is unique to the film, to play a narrative role as well–a role entirely consonant with the author's intention.

I guess all of this is to say that I hope readers will allow filmmakers a little latitude with the adaptations of their favorite books. To answer the question I started with: maybe it's never possible for the film to be better than the book, but it is definitely possible for it to be just as good in a totally different way, providing a way to enjoy a story twice for the first time. My personal favorite adaptation is The Remains of the Day, which is both one of my favorite books and one of my favorite movies.