Much Ado About Nothing

As a fan of Joss Whedon’s work, watching his adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing was a lot of fun. Shakespeare may seem like a strange choice for Whedon, who is most famous for directing action and sci-fi movies like The Avengers and Serenity, and creating similarly themed television series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Dollhouse. However, knowing his penchant for strong characters and witty dialogue, Much Ado About Nothing seems like a natural choice.

The characters and dialogue are the very things that Whedon emphasizes in his film, and in doing so, remains faithful to Shakespeare’s source text, despite its updated setting. 

One thing that separates Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing from other modernizations of Shakespeare is that the original language is kept. It is not clear why; Whedon is a talented enough writer that an adaptation of the dialogue could have been quite good. However, keeping the original dialogue in combination with an updated setting served to highlight an important aspect of the play: its universality.

By transposing the setting to a newsroom, the BBC Shakespeare Retold version also suggests the universality of Shakespeares play. However, it does not express it quite as well as Whedon’s film, in which the setting is much less explicit; for all we know, it could be happening anywhere. In the film, as in the play, the story is minimal (victorious men return from a war) and the setting inconsequential (Messina—but it has no effect on the plot).  What war, to be specific? Does it matter?

The focus is obviously on the people. The plot would seem ludicrous without characters as gullible as Claudio, as sharped-tongued as Beatrice, and as fickle as Benedick. The plot really only works because of such characters; they are also all the plot needs to work. Whedon’s choice to film in black and white effectively neutralizes the setting, shifting our focus to the words and actions of the characters. This is in notable contrast to the Kenneth Branagh version; I remember those big, green hedges more than the words said in the garden scene.

Note how this background--which is relatively busy--doesn't distract from the performers nearly as much as it would in color.

Though the setting in Whedon’s film appears to be modern day and not Shakespeare’s, the change in setting emphasizes the universal aspect of the play. Even the references to modern technology are brilliantly woven into the plot—like using the iPod in the garden scene and the video of Don Jon’s arrest—in places where they seem to belong, rather than awkwardly tacked on. Indeed, one could argue that the setting, in regards to cultural time period, at least, is not really updated. The Shakespeare Retold version shows that, in a truly modern-day rendition of the tale, Hero would not be immediately returning to the altar, and certainly not with Claudio. Since Whedon’s film keeps the plays original ending, it is hard to say it takes place in the contemporary day and age; instead, it seems to be ignoring day and age all together.

In the 1993 film, shooting on location in Italy added a visual splendor characteristic of period pieces. The 2012 film, in contrast, is lacking any period at all. 

Ultimately the film reveals that what matters is what happens between the people involved, not where or when it happens. Shakespeare understood that. So did Joss Whedon, and his choices in making his version of Much Ado reflect that. 

Emma: The Merits of Multiple Adaptations

The various film versions of Jane Austen’s Emma offer fascinating insights into the broader nature of film adaptation. Audiences tend to categorize films based on genre, first and foremost. And by incorporating the expected conventions, filmmakers can make their product more marketable. Austen adaptations tend to be period pieces—films that strive to capture the look and feel of certain time period. And although this can make for tempting Oscar-bait, it is not always accessible to the masses. Thus, film iterations of Emma typically emphasize the romantic and comedic aspects of Austen’s novel—comfortably placing their films within the extremely marketable (and inexplicably popular) romantic comedy.

This seems like a pretty solid game plan for an adaptation attempt. Austen’s novel has humor and satire, drama and romance, and the dialogue (though perhaps insufferable by today’s standards) is certainly distinctive of her time. What is curious, then, is why so many attempts have been made—seemly upon the assumption that all the previous attempts were somehow lacking.  

Interestingly, the novel has been adapted for film in a feature-length format, as well for television, with a more episodic treatment. Personally I find that the episodic format more accurately captures the “everyday life” aspect of Austen’s novel, allowing us to spend a little more time to “live with” the people of Highbury, as Emma does. I cannot say for certain whether it succeeds or not, since we did not screen them in class; however, I would expect that having more time to live with Emma would form a better equivalence of meaning with both the complex social interactions and the sprawling character arc that Austen writes for Emma.

With that being said, more streamlined feature-length adaptations emphasize the “big picture” plotline, which one could argue is equally important. To be honest, it is not that complicated of a story, and audiences are much more likely to invest two hours of their time rather than several evenings.

The two feature length version of Emma that we watched in class, Emma (1996) and Clueless (1995), offer different insights into Austen’s novel. Both are good films in their own right; it is difficult to compare them in any meaningful way, except by their relation to the novel. The filmmakers strove to emphasize different aspect of the source text, and in this regard, I think each was successful.

 Emma, staring Gywneth Paltrow, emphasizes the look and feel of Austen’s era, most especially through the characters’ speech. Some of the dialogue is borrowed directly from the text. It streamlines the story and emphasizes the romantic and comedic aspects (the tagline is “Cupid is armed and dangerous!”) to make it more accessible to modern audiences, while still firmly rooted in the visual and linguistic setting. While the film does a good job of showing us what the period “looked” like, it does help us much with understanding it. Austen’s subtle social criticisms of Highbury’s elite are largely glazed over. It focuses the attention of Emma’s character and her various flaws and virtues, and the lower class is almost never shown.

"Cupid is armed and dangerous!"

 Clueless helps us to understand Highbury a little better: as a complex social network, complete with cliques, social classes and social protocols. As the writer of Clueless realized, the story and plot of Emma is universal enough that it could potentially take place anywhere that those criteria are met. And since those criteria are distinctive characteristic of any high school movie…the genre makes a whole lot more sense than one might initially think. The parallels abound; indeed, the necessity of finding a husband in Austen’s time is quite comparable to the social pressure felt by high schoolers to date.  In the high school movie genre, it is immediately understood that there is a lower class: the “unpopular” kids. By casting the farmers of Austen as the stoners of Clueless, we are better to able to understand why Emma does NOT want Harriet to marry Mr. Martin. In one of the most brilliant parallels, the film is as definitive of the 1990’s as the novel is of 1816 England. In the modern literary world, Clueless does Austen’s novel a great service by giving today’s audiences a much better understanding of the world in which Emma lives.

Note the distinctive period costumes. 

Again, quite distinctive. It's definitely the 90's.

Film theorist William Galperin claims that this attention to the world around Emma/Cher is in fact more faithful to Austen than the numerous other adaptions. This may be true, but I still prefer to say that the film simply emphasizes that aspect of the text better than some others. Each adaptation gives us new ways of thinking about the text. It is an excellent example of the choices filmmakers face when producing an adaptation, and how not all of their approaches are necessarily as bad as they sound. 

Rear Window & Memento

One of the most obvious differences between novels and short stories is length; this certainly true in page number, but most novels contain more content as well. During class discussion, we noted that novels are adapted into film much more frequently than short stories, possibly because novels give the filmmakers and screenwriters much more to go off of when putting together their movies. There is generally more plot, more backstory, and better developed characters. This is what readers love about novels, and it is what they are expecting to see when they watch the film. Yet certain filmmakers have found that short stories allow for much, much more creative freedom on the filmmaker’s part, without risking too much backlash from audiences (who most likely were unaware of the source text’s existence).

Two great examples of this are Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). Both are puzzle-picture, mystery-thrillers with dubious points-of-view, and both clearly bear the indelible stamp of their auteur-minded creators. In its first shot alone, that slow pan around the courtyard, Rear Window is technically and logistically impressive even by today’s standards, and Memento is a brilliant showcase for Nolan’s gift of meticulously plotted storytelling. And interestingly enough, both are based on short stories—albeit very loosely.

Though the films were made almost 50 years apart, their method of adaptation is quite similar. Each borrows the concept of their source (a house-bound man spying on his neighbors, a man with short-term memory loss trying to track down his wife’s killer) and expands upon it, taking the concept in directions entirely absent from the source text.

Therein lies the brilliance of adapting a short story. The directions taken by our auteurs seem like natural expansions to the concept, rather than imposed contrivances. For example, Hitchcock adds an ethical dimension to the story, questioning whether it is morally right to look inside the window of an oblivious homeowner, to spy on people without their knowledge. In the short story, the narrator brushes the issue aside, to be forgotten in the wake of the immediate plot. It makes little difference in the short story, because it has an entirely different focus. A film, however, needs to beef up its storytelling with such thought-provoking ideas to keep the audience engaged. They serve to make the story relatable, too; the film’s eerie social commentary (“We’ve become a nation of peeping Toms”) has become even more relevant with time. (What would Hitchcock’s film look like today, given our culture’s consumption by social media?) The film finds so much more to say about the paradoxical disconnection we have with people we “follow” so closely than the short story ever did.

"You don't know the meaning of the word neighbor..."

Memento follows much the same pattern, though perhaps shares even less with its source than Rear Window does. They share the concept of the 10 minute man, his driving obsession, and the distinctly segmented nature of the narrative. And really, that is about it. Whereas the Jonathan Nolan’s story is intriguing, ultimately the reader can glean little from it in terms of actual story or plot. In this regard, it effectively communicates the lost, disjointed, “something’s missing” feeling that the protagonist lives with daily. When adapting it to the screen, Christopher and Jonathan kept and expanded that theme into the much broader: “What is truth? How do I know what is true or real?” The open-ended nature of the question is another trait that is uniquely Christopher Nolan, yet its organic and seamless application made me wonder why I never picked up on it in the story. Since everyone has been deceived, misguided, lost or confused more than one in their life, the audience can relate to it as well. We feel for Leonard. We relate to his search for truth and his desire for justice. I found this not be the case in the short story; there was sympathy for his plight, but there just is not enough provided about the character for us to root for him, to care whether he succeeds or not. The nonlinear nature of the film helps too; it forces us to become more involved, more invested, than the short story does. While the film and the story both arrive at the chilling notion that he will not remember when he has completed his mission, the realization is especially horrifying in the film because of the added plot and the added time we have had to grow close to the character. If we relate to him—and his mission reflects our search for truth—then what does his blatant self-deception at the end of film say about us? Do we lie to ourselves to be happy? It is perhaps less social commentary than a rumination on human nature, but it hits close to home in way that the detached, limited viewpoint of the story is not able to.

"Do I lie to myself to be happy?...I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them."

Let it never be said that the film is never as good as the book—I would argue that these two films are even better than their source texts. The directors dug deeper, finding more insights and significance to the concepts than was mentioned in the stories. Fidelity was not their primary concern; rather, “How can I make a film worth making?” They deserve credit for seeing the untapped potential in these concepts and inspiring us to look for new, imaginative ways of thinking about the stories we read. 

Gatsby '74 vs. Gatsby '13

We watched two version of The Great Gatsby (1974 & 2013) as a class.

The films share a source text, but have little else in common. In Jack Clayton’s 1974 rendition, we are shown the events of the novel, like a picture book—but the result is a slow, unengaging, and ultimately boring film. Baz Luhrmann’s film, however, is emotionally resonant, tense, and visually sensational. They are almost opposites. Yet they were both widely panned by reviewers, with critics citing a bad case of style over substance for both films. Looking at the films side by side, however, it is clear which one has more substance—and it certainly was not the one I expected.

Great Gatsby 1974 Reviews

Great Gatsby '13 Reviews

Luhrmann’s films are, by nature, controversial. Personally, I found nothing enjoyable about the chaotic mess that was Milan Rouge!, and have avoided Romeo + Juliet because of it. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Luhrmann’s treatment of The Great Gatsby, even if (according to Rotten Tomatoes) 51% of the critics were not. Some critics accused the film of being “vulgar,” “obscene,” “demeaning” and “ghastly”—yet other reviewers, such as Richard Roeper, call it “the best attempt yet to capture the essence of the book.”

Richard Roeper Gatsby Review

A novel like The Great Gatsby has many interpretations, angles and lenses through which it can be viewed. A myriad of themes can be identified. A problem with screen translations is that the filmmakers have to choose an interpretation and a reduced number of themes to explore.  On these grounds I have to agree with Roeper; Luhrmann’s film simply reflected
the themes of the book better than Clayton’s.

Take Gatsby and Daisy’s relationship, for instance. The 1974 version emphasized their romance, even featuring a montage of the couple enjoying each other’s company (most notably picnicking on a bright summer’s day). Luhrmann, in my opinion, does a much better job of capturing, as Bruce Handy describes it, the “anti-romantic” nature of Fitzgerald’s book. Yes, Clayton’s film portrayed a romance that is doomed, but never realizes that that is the point—I guess it was more important for them to get their stars some screen time together. Luhrmann, however, shows scenes of Nick surveying the ransacked mansion, and Daisy refusing to go to the funeral, conveying the tragedy of Gatsby’s unfulfilled dreams in a way that was not suggested in Clayton’s film.

Following Fitzgerald’s lead, Luhrmann at least attempted to breech the topic of race, giving the issue a brief (but nonetheless significant) mention. You know the scene—a small group of well-dressed, black partiers with a white chauffeur. It speaks of success over impossible odds, and gives credence to Gatsby’s incredible penchant for hope. Yet for whatever reason, Clayton cut the scene entirely, and I cannot recall seeing a non-Caucasian face in the film. By including that scene, Luhrmann paints a picture closer to the multifaceted, awe-inspiring world that Nick finds in the novel. And while I never would have thought that Luhrmann’s unique visual aesthetic would have been a good fit for Gatsby, I thought it formed a kind of “equivalence of meaning” between it and Fitzgerald’s vivid prose, while also reflecting Nick’s sense of wonder and nostalgia rather nicely. True, the white, billowy curtains were such a comically literal depiction that the scene bordered on farce. However, the ash heaps surrounding Wilson’s garage were so expansively bleak that the image helped to better convey Fitzgerald’s original conception, in a way mere words could not. The contrast between Wilson’s poverty and Gatsby’s wealth, though never explicitly mentioned, it explored in such vivid visual detail that it does not have to be. In this way, the style actually adds to the substance.

Note the contrast between the gray workers and the sharp colors of Tom and Nick's clothes.

For me, one of the most important aspects of an adaptation is the filmmaker’s attention to the characters. Everyone has their own opinions as to what they are really like, but the character we see on the screen comes from a mix of interpretations, including input from the screenwriter, the actor, and the director. Can we really expect these characters to be as we imagined? No, but it is fair for us to want to care about them, as we did the characters in the books. One of the most memorable moments of the 2013 film is when Gatsby loses his temper in the apartment scene. He shows us then the man he has always tried to suppress—and consequently, shows us that he is, indeed, a man. It should have been the most memorable scene in the 1974 film too, but Robert Redford never showed the audience a Gatsby that was not calm, cool and collected. Dicaprio showed us a Gatsby that is vulnerable beneath his suave veneer, making his Gatsby the only one we care about. This scene is representative of the whole of each film as well; Lurhmann’s film pulsed with an emotional tension that the 1974 film, too long and too slow, severely lacked.

My favorite aspect of Luhrmann’s Gatsby was the narrative set-up. In Luhrmann’s eyes, Nick is Fitzgerald. It seemed unnecessary to some critics, but to me it made the difference. Perhaps it is a personal thing; I found Gatsby’s story, and indeed the whole novel, entirely pointless before I understood that Fitzgerald was condemning the careless attitude of society’s elite. By exploring Nick’s motivations to write, it gave the film (and the character) a much needed sense of purpose and relevance. With this near-plot-less story, there is just no reason for us to care if we do not know why it is important to the teller. My feeling at the end of Clayton’s film was “So…what was the point of that?” But when Nick adds that crucial adjective to his title at the end, I knew exactly what the point of Luhrmann’s film was.

I am struck by one more way in which Luhrmann’s film is the more faithful of the two: it gives us something to talk about. Indeed, there is so much more I wanted to mention about the film, but this blog is too long as it is. The 1974 version fails to stir up any kind of reaction in those who watch it, emotional or otherwise, and as such, fails to interest us. Fitzgerald’s novel has held interest for nearly 100 years, but upon its release, meet its fair share of controversy—an “initial failure,” as David Denby says. It is fitting, then, that a film coming anywhere close to living up to the title should do the same.

What do you think? How do you feel about my claim that Luhrmann’s visual style may be an equivalent to Fitzgerald’s descriptive prose?

Adaptation.

We watched Adaptation. (2002) as a class on February 10^th.

The third act of Adaptation. raises some fascinating questions—first and foremost of which is, “Just what exactly is going on?”

It is certainly a valid question. About two-thirds of the way through the movie, Charlie Kauffman asks Donald, “How would you end the screenplay?” I believe that the last third of the film is Donald’s response to Charlie—this is the ending he would write. The jarring tonal shift that follows is impossible to miss. The film is no longer a leisurely-paced comedy driven by the quirky neurosis of our hero; instead it becomes something of a crime-thriller actioner, riddled with clichés, complete with car chases and horrific deaths.  

Why, then, is this the version of the film Charlie ultimately settles upon? He has made it quite clear that he wants a highly original film, cliché-free, and “true” to the author’s book. We have discussed the various ways a film can be “true” or “faithful” to its source in class—by retaining the themes, the characters, or through an “equivalence of meaning”—but Charlie takes it to a new level. He venerates the book and its author, Susan Orlean, for whom he has clearly developed a kind of infatuation. He desperately fears disappointing her by producing something that he does not love as much as the book. When Charlie complains that the book has no story, he is told, “Well make one up.” Out of respect to the author, however, he refuses to do so.

What Charlie fails to realize, however, is that the book is already an adaptation—an adaptation of the real life story of Laroche. Orlean struggles to capture the essence of Laroche faithfully. She is noticeably troubled when her dinner party guests misinterpret her portrayal of Laroche, finding Laroche’s idiosyncrasies laughably backward. The passion Orlean sees in him and respects him for is something she cannot seem to replicate in a way that her readers will understand. Susan Orlean is to Charlie as Laroche is to Orlean; both authors feel such a deep respect for their sources that they cannot bear to do them injustice.

The next question then is this: can you still be respectful of the source material if you change it? A large portion of the film focuses on Charlie’s abysmal failure to adapt the book without “changing it.” The film never really answers the question of respect, but it does seem to suggest that adaptation without change is impossible. As Robert Stam points out in his article “Beyond Fidelity,” a book is strictly a verbal medium, whereas film has many tracks—sound, light, both written and spoken word—making adaptation, in the most literal sense, impossible (76). Having read the article “Orchid Fever,” Charlie’s problem is clear: there is simply not enough story or plot to make an interesting movie. Susan Orlean herself described the book as “particularly unsuited” to adaptation (see second clip). Though he strives to make a movie that resembles “real life”—without drama or life lessons—his script just is not working out. Perhaps one difference between the mediums of film and the written word is that film requires more drama and plot than the latter does, particularly in the case of non-fiction. Would a movie without a conflict or crisis even be worth seeing? McKee believes it would be uninteresting, boring, and a waste of everyone’s time (see clip).  A film without such structure would not be a film, just a series of images or scenes without anything to hold them together or propel it forward. Charlie mistakes structure for cliché, and as a result, cannot create a screenplay worth filming.

After the film ended, I found myself wondering how else the film could have ended. I came up with nothing. The real Charlie Kauffman must have had a similar thought—and that, I believe, is the reason the film has the ending that it does. At some point, he realized that his struggles to adapt such a challenging source made a better story than the source itself. In an interview concerning Adaptation., Susan Orlean said, “I don’t see how you could have made a conventional film from the book…I felt that it was truer to the book than a conventional film could have been.”

Interview with Susan Orlean about Adaptation

Perhaps by giving us a “Hollywood” ending, Kauffman is addresses the whole reason we like to see such endings—sometimes, they just make for a more satisfying movie.

What do you think? How would you have ended the film if you were adapting The Orchid Thief? How would you have added drama and conflict to the plot without devising a (highly fictionalized) new ending?

Corrigan, Timothy. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012. Print.