It’s pretty clear that film and literature are very different mediums and when you try to make one into the other, such as an adaptation, you’re going to have some things that are lost in translation and seen in a different light. When an original work is made into a movie, I think they’re kind of at a disadvantage because they only have a few hours to get the whole story across while also keeping the viewer intrigued by what is taking place on the screen right in front of their eyes. Movies are able to contain special effects, visuals, and music though which can impact a viewer and make a scene stay in their mind longer which is a plus side to being able to view something. Literature on the other hand, has a greater advantage. They can keep the reader entertained for a considerably long time and you’re able to get more information about people and events such as what a character is thinking or what is happening behind the scenes during a specific event. I understand that people are going to have different opinions when it comes to whether a book or film adaptation of a work is the best and it is not always going to be the same for each and every piece of work. One thing I think though, is that The Namesake in both the film and the movie, they’re both accurate and concise in the way that they relate to one another.
Both the movie adaptation and the original work, the book, deal with the same topic: struggling to find identity in a place that’s not really your own. For the most part, the book and movie coincide here and are kept the same. In the movie adaptation of this, Ashoke comes to New York as opposed to Boston. It’s a nice thing too because New York has the Queensboro Bridge which crosses over the East River and Hooghly...
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...rom that point on he begins to resent his namesake and go on to find his own identity in the States.
Even though the book and movie version of The Namesake are different in some instances, they both get the point across and are fairly accurate representations of one another. The movie, like the book, shows the common things that people go through when migrating from a familiar place to the States and how difficult it is to adjust when you want to keep past traditions. I’m still sticking with my original opinion that I tend to think that books are better portrayed than movies, but this one was a close call.
Works Cited
Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Print.
The Namesake. Dir. Mira Nair. Prod. Mira Nair and Lydia Dean Pilcher. By Sooni Taraporevala. Perf. Kal Penn, Tabu , and Irrfan Khan. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2007.
The film is a fairly faithful adaptation of the book. The amateurish style of the book gives it some appeal as a more sleek and sophisticated style wouldn’t evoke a sense of angst’ desperation and confusion that the novel does.
...rtrayed differently in the movie. Lennie is shown as being very mentally challenged, whereas in the book he is just a little slow and has a mind of a young child. Although some changes are made in the movie to make it flow better, it is still based on the same story as the book. The movie has the same plot line and characters, and some of the scenes are told in the exact same way as they are in the novel. As well, the movie and the book give out the same themes. This story is about how all the people in the Great Depression were trying to escape their unhappy, lonely lives, but weren’t capable of doing so. The movie stays very true to the book even though some things are removed or added. Everything that is added or changed still works very well and captures the film perfectly.
Usually movies try to take the story to a different level or by adding parts or just try to change it to a completely different story. Some of the differences between the movie as to the book are some little and large differences. They might also try taking little parts away that will change how the readers see the story characters. An example of that would be Walter not smoking in the movie (Pg 115). Walter usually smokes because he is stressed or just as a way to relax. Walter also does not get punched by Mam...
In conclusion, details involving the characters and symbolic meanings to objects are the factors that make the novel better than the movie. Leaving out aspects of the novel limits the viewer’s appreciation for the story. One may favor the film over the novel or vice versa, but that person will not overlook the intense work that went into the making of both. The film and novel have their similarities and differences, but both effectively communicate their meaning to the public.
When novels are adapted for the cinema, directors and writers frequently make changes in the plot, setting, characterization and themes of the novel. Sometimes the changes are made in adaptations due to the distinctive interpretations of the novel, which involve personal views of the book and choices of elements to retain, reproduce, change or leave out. On the contrary, a film is not just an illustrated version of the novel; it is a totally different medium. When adapting the novel, the director has to leave out a number of things for the simple reason of time difference. Furthermore, other structures and techniques must be added to the film to enhance the beauty and impressions of it. Like a translator, the director wants to do some sort of fidelity to the original work and also create a new work of art in a different medium. Regardless of the differences in the two media, they also share a number of elements: they each tell stories about characters.
One would think that it would be quite easy to adapt a novel to a screenplay; after all, what is there to do but turn the dialogue into lines and description into set design? However, common sense, aided by the horrifying number of absolutely awful adaptations, dictates that it simply is not that easy. When moviegoers have problems with a film adaptation of a book, their complaints tend to lie in the tendency of the creators of the film to change elements of the story: plot, character, and the like. It would seem, then, that the best way to make a successful adaptation of a novel would be to just stay as true as possible to every detail mentioned in the book. However, staying as true as possible to plot points, character type, and the like may be the best way to a horrendous adaptation.
While watching the movie, I could see that the main characters in the book, both their names and traits, were the same in both the movie and book. However, aside from that there were many different as...
	Books, more often than not, are better than the movies that are made from them. This is due to the immense power of our imaginations. Readers use their imaginations to fill the space that exists between him/herself and the book with such things as dreams, past experiences, and hopes. For this reason, there is much more depth and symbolic depictions in the novella, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, compared with the movie version, Grand Isle. Due to this, the effect on the reader is much more potent than the effect on the viewer.
Have you ever watched a movie and been dissatisfied, because it was not similar to its book? There are multiple movies that seem as if they are their own story, for they don't resemble their book at all. For example, “The Pit and the Pendulum.” by Edgar Allen Poe. He, himself would not approve of the film that follows his story. For one thing, the storyline was no where near to being like his book. Another reasoning is that he wrote based of one man not multiple people. And finally, he wouldn’t of approved of the art on the walls in the room with the pit and pendulum. These are the reasonings of why Poe would not appreciate the film.
It is important to relate literature to one another so we can create the mind set of characters, add uniqueness to the entire film to make it unconventional to other literature, and create a further meaning of life based on imagery and symbolism that can be created to give a further understanding to literature, but also reality as well and the paths taken to find the correct identity to create happiness and
Literature is a one track medium, invoking "unfixed" images that is, many specific details are supplied by the reader. On the other hand, film is a five track medium of fixed, specific images and sounds. Invariably, this fixed experience does not exactly mirror that invoked by the literary source material. Therefore, we cannot view an adaptation as a literal transposing, but should instead consider it as a kind of translation.
Imagine if your work was to be published, but the publishers required you to change even the most minute detail to fit their need. This work would be unrecognizable, not at all what you wanted to convey with your story. This is essentially what happens with every movie adaptation of a popular novel, and readers are always enraged. One such case is The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, which was unnecessarily changed. The lack of many important details in the movie adaptation of The Book Thief shows how obvious it is that movies must stay true to the book for full effect.
The Namesake, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri published in the year 2003. Ultimately, in 2007, The Namesake became a major motion picture. Both the novel and the film effectively convey the theme of cultural tensions between American and Indian traditions. Throughout the story, the theme is effectively communicated by the many struggles the Ganguli family endures in America such as: Gogol’s naming, the enforcement of Indian tradition in the Ganguli children’s lives, and Gogol’s unhappy love affairs. The film and novel both do an excellent job of portraying the culture clash of two traditions in the developing society of America.
The intention of this paper is to focus on the inevitability of change during adaptation, from fiction to film, which is essential and unavoidable, mandated both by the constraints of time and medium, with the example of Triveni’s Sharapanjara. Some film theorists have argued that a director should be nonchalant with the source, given that novel and film are entirely dissimilar entities, two singular art forms, and should be seen as such. Another line of argument is that though the director is invested with a certain freedom to change, ‘to adapt’, the original fiction; the film must be accurate / truthful to either the effect or the theme or the message of the novel. In other words the adaptation must faithfully incorporate the aesthetics of the original work, and the changes should be incorporated along one of these axes. “Perhaps the search for an ‘original’ or a single author is no longer relevant in a postmodern world where a belief in a single meaning is seen to be a fruitless quest. Instead of worrying about whether a film is ‘faithful’ to the original literary text (founded in a logocentric belief that there is a single meaning), we read adaptations for their plurality of meanings. Thus the intertextuality of adaptation is our primary concern” (Cartmell: 28).Since the transcription of a novel into a film is impossible; it seems absurd to be obsessed with ‘accuracy’. Terry Eagleton’s explanation of the Derridian notion of text is that “ there is nothing in the world that is not ‘textual’, in the sense of being made up of a complex weave of elements which prevents it from being clearly demarcated from something else. ‘Textual’ means, that nothing stands gloriously alone (Albrecht: 26).Adaptation is recreating, translating th...
"Books and movies are like apple and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.” said Stephen King (goodreads.com). It is indeed true, books and movies have several common things and yet have differences. They both give us the same story, but are viewed completely different. Reading books and watching movies are similar as they both tell a story and give details and information about the story. Reading books or watching movies gives the reader and the viewer the same feeling and emotions about the story. People can feel gloomy or pleased with the story after reading a book or watching a movie. Both books and movies have the same general concepts, which are the themes and main characters of