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.
Second there is more detail in the book than the movie. Well, I think that more detail is better because the more you know the better you understand the movie or
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...
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.
...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.
Hollywood in known for making literary adaptations, and such adaptations will exploit context. Movies bring literary properties to the public that otherwise would not bother to read them. However the "marriage" of literature and film holds their own separate qualities.
Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namesake illustrates the assimilation of Gogol as a second generation American immigrant, where Gogol faces the assimilation of becoming an American. Throughout the novel, Gogol has been struggling with his name. From kindergarten to college, Gogol has questioned the reason why he was called Nikhil when he was a child, to the reason why he was called Gogol when he was in college. Having a Russian name, Gogol often encounters questions from people around him, asking the reason of his name. Gogol was not given an Indian name from his Indian family or an American name from the fact that he was born in America, to emphasize that how hard an individual try to assimilate into a different culture, he is still bonded to his roots as the person he ethnically is.
Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.
At this point, the readers create their own movie in a way. They will determine important aspects of how the character speaks, looks like, and reacts. Whereas, in the movie, the reader has no choice but to follow the plot laid out in front of them. No longer can they picture the characters in their own way or come up with their different portrayals. The fate of the story, while still unpredictable, was highly influenced by the way the characters looked, spoke, and presented themselves on screen.
	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.
On the basis of what I thought of the play and in light of the filmic techniques we discussed in class my intellectual and emotional thoughts on the film where very different from the book. However I do not think that the film took away any authenticity and vibe from the book, it rather enhanced it especially in the aesthetic use.
to America with grace and compassion. This story by Jhumpa Lahiri, is an allegory establishing an identity with using symbolic meaning between two cultures that intersect. The themes throughout the story refer to immigrant experiences, the conflict of cultures, the contrast of assimilation and the connection between generations. The Namesake, opens the worlds of emotions Ashima experiences, while straddling her two worlds. This story of identity allows readers to travel with Ashima on an intimate journey through her life as an immigrant.
Now for the counterargument. Some people say that they enjoyed watching the movie after reading the book. They may say that they think the movie does follow the book, and that the characters and events are the same in both versions. However, they are wrong because there is plenty of evidence that says otherwise. The different scenes of the book and movie, and also the characters that are completely different and don’t follow the same path in the two different
The Webster's New World College dictionary (2005) defines novels as relatively long fictional prose narrative and films as a sequence of photographs projected on a screen in such a rapid succession that they create an optical illusion of movement (p.529 & p.988) . These two genres have been the main topic of an age old debate. The debate revolves around the question, which are better novels or films. People tend to have different opinions on whether books or movies tell a better story.The debate continues to grow due to Hollywood making more and more movies based on books. To illustrate my views on this debate, I will be comparing and contrasting the novel and film versions of William Golding's The Lord of the Flies and Toni Morrison's Beloved. While both novels and films provide their audience with a great form of entertainment, each genre has it’s pros and cons and deciding whether a novel or film tells a better story is dependent on the audiences particular preferences. Novels allow the reader to create the images, voices, and background of the story using their imagination to visualize the story for themselves. On the other hand ,a good director can take a great piece of literature and turn it into an amazing visual experience. However, the film is dependent on the directors vision and audience has little say on how the story is portrayed. I would rather read novels than watch films because novels provide better story experiences for their audiences through its increased creative freedom through imagination, lack of time limits, increased exposure, and the social experience it provides.
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.
Adaptation of any kind has been a debate for many years. The debate on cinematic adaptations of literary works was for many years dominated by the questions of fidelity to the source and by the tendencies to prioritize the literary originals over their film versions (Whelehan, 2006). In the transference of a story from one form to another, there is the basic question of adherence to the source, of what can be lost (Stibetiu, 2001). There is also the question of what the filmmakers are being faithful to or is it the novel’s plot in every detail or the spirit of the original (Smith, 2016). These are only few query on the issue of fidelity in the film adaptation.