The Book Wins Out!

I'm über-glad I stuck with A Thousand Acres. The thing really picked up in the second half, and of course, the book was much better-- more nuanced; more willing to go more in-depth into more dark places; more cognizant of the resident seeds of evil hanging around in even the most lamblike of us-- than the movie. I was especially impressed with the way Smiley had the narrator grow up and out of her meek cluelessness, without feeling pressured to bring the story to a victorious, trumpets-and-sunshine end.

The one thing the movie adaptation did well? Cast Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of Rose. And I can't remember at all how the cinema version brought things to a close, but at least from what I recall seeing, Jessica Lange was also a good choice for Ginny, at least in pre-epiphany mode.

So: one more win for the book over the movie. While considering this competition, though, I was reminded of those rare times when each version of a story is equally as good as the other. I'm thinking about two examples in particular: 1) the account of Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. I first learned about it from the documentary that detailed it all, Man on Wire. Absolutely brilliant. It sent me straight to the protagonist's own written original, To Reach the Clouds. Even though I knew what would happen, and how, the latter had me biting my nails to the end.

2) The Harry Potter series is an entirely different animal for me, and constitutes one rare, collective instance where I'm content to let each genre exist as a set of completely unique products-- maybe because all of them were of high quality, and because, given the length of the later books, I was willing to allow for some excising in the later films.

That's all I have to say about that, though, other than the fact that I would like to check out Peter Brook's lengthy version of The Mahabharata. The time, though! There have to be five hours free somewhere...

When Cinema Gets to You First

Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0

Somehow, I was unaware that Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres contained the story it does. I'd enjoyed a book of the author's short stories, and so when I saw the novel at a book sale a while ago, I grabbed it. When I dove in last night, I suddenly became aware on page eighteen that I knew what this was going to turn out to be; in this case, I'd seen that movie before.

Probably because my sister had subjected me to the film at the same time she also sat me down in front of One True Thing, the two got jumbled in my mind, and the former took on the name of the latter. (I'm not sure what happened in the ol' mental nether regions to the Anna Quindlen tale so rudely stripped of its identity.) But now that I know what I'm dealing with, I'm not really excited about seeing this through, in spite of the fact that Smiley's a good writer. I'm trying to pump myself up with things such as reminders that Greek tragedy is really just the same stories everyone already knew down to the last detail, but necessarily shaped into something original by each successive playwright who took on some heroic tale or gods-ridden nightmare. And I love me some Aristophanes and Sophocles, so what's the problem here?

The probable problem is the fact that I saw the Hollywood version of whatever Smiley produced first, and most likely in much better fashion. And so, if nothing else, I'm going to read this thing through to the end, in an attempt to establish the authorial superiority of the original. (Let's hope it happens.) There's a nagging reminder, though, of films that in my humble opinion, won out over their written source materials: Gone with the Wind, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Firm. (Those middle two hold tenuous places in this list, since I watched and read all available versions of each multiple times-- but, with the exception of some vague hunting episode in Red Fern, when I think of both today, all I can come up with are scenes from the movies.)

So: I'll do my best to keep Michelle Pfeiffer et al out of my head while reading. (Already, I'm picturing the father with features completely unlike Jason Robards', so I'm optimistic about the success of said aim-- but, while looking this thing up on IMDB, was amazed to find that Colin Firth has a significant part in the film. Nice going, crappy memory.)