Film: The Book Is Better

IT’s easy for a good movie to color subsequent readings of the book it’s based on. Literature is a subtle, fragile medium, more complex than cinema but also easily overwhelmed by what gets summoned up on screen. It’s hard to re-read even so powerful a story as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings without Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth crowding into the mind’s eye, shunting the imagination aside. Pick up Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and you’re likely to picture Humphrey Bogart filling Philip Marlowe’s suit; re-read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and you’ll probably hear Maggie Smith’s brogue trilling the title character’s every line of dialogue.

Sometimes, though, it works the other way: A great book can spoil a good film adaptation, by setting the bar so high that mere artistic success is insufficient, and the viewer spends the film regretting the places where the novelist’s genius outshines the director’s vision. That’s the case with Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of P. D. James’s dystopian novel-it’s an impressive movie, touched by flashes of inspiration, but it’s best seen, and judged, by an audience that hasn’t yet read the book.

About the Author

Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat is a former National Review contributing editor.

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IT’s easy for a good movie to color subsequent readings of the book it’s based on. Literature is a subtle, fragile medium, more complex than cinema but also easily overwhelmed by what gets summoned up on screen. It’s hard to re-read even so powerful a story as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings without Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth crowding into the mind’s eye, shunting the imagination aside. Pick up Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and you’re likely to picture Humphrey Bogart filling Philip Marlowe’s suit; re-read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and you’ll probably hear Maggie Smith’s brogue trilling the title character’s every line of dialogue.

Sometimes, though, it works the other way: A great book can spoil a good film adaptation, by setting the bar so high that mere artistic success is insufficient, and the viewer spends the film regretting the places where the novelist’s genius outshines the director’s vision. That’s the case with Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of P. D. James’s dystopian novel-it’s an impressive movie, touched by flashes of inspiration, but it’s best seen, and judged, by an audience that hasn’t yet read the book.