Yesterday, I happened to be in a discussion, where the comparison between a movie and its book came about. The question, inevitably, rolled on to how the movie based on a book, and how the book in original, compares to each other. Which is more expressive - the book, or the movie?
As I have always maintained on this issue, there can be no comparison between a book and its movie. The question is absurd. They are in completely separate domains - on what frame of reference can you exactly measure them up? It is like asking which is more expressive or superior - the paintings, the songs or the pure instrumental music? Which is more useful - physics or biology? Can anyone answer them?
The argument followed, that one has always found the book to be much more satisfying than the movies. Whenever the person has gone to a movie of some famous book he has read sometime before, the movie hadn’t satisfied him as much as the book. But that is obvious, isn’t it? In books, the author banks upon the imagination of the reader to create much of his sensitive effects. The same scene, described in same words, would lead to different visual imagery for different readers. The author specifies much, but there exists a lot of space for the 'unsaid' things, space for personal life and psychology to get identified with the theme. And it is precisely the 'unsaid' things, which when we realise, feel, through the lines of the author - which makes us feel most deeply, and gives us the most satisfaction. Now these things - this visualisation of something by the reader - this experiencing of the same situation in similar yet delicately different ways based on our own personal psychological profile, always happens in a way which is the most comfortable and likable to our own psyche. Given the freedom, from any skeletal framework in the book, the mind will always conjure up an image which is the most appealing for the person. Any other form, which might be more comfortable for others, would suit a little less. And books have precisely this advantage over films - in books, we have a much larger freedom in our perception, identification and visualisation of the theme. Whereas in films, the scope of visualisation of our own images is hugely diminished or changed or doesn’t exist at all. The director has to put forward his visualisation, and he has to bank on other kinds of expressions through which the audience has to appreciate the film. Instead, you should find greatness through other situations, expressions and treatments, which only if you could keep yourself open, you would be able to perceive.
Now, you might say, don’t films provide this space for manoeuvre? Doesn’t the same scene appeals to us in different ways? Yes, it does. It has to - since it is the 'unsaid' things - the things we come to feel/realise - which moves us most deeply, films and any other form of art has to provide that space of manoeuvre to appeal to anyone. But when a film is based on a book you have read, the spaces of manoeuvre offered by the film can be more constrained and totally different from those provided in the book. And that is exactly where the conflict occurs. The film will, of course, appeal with a lot of subtleties, but the places where these are placed, are more likely than not, not the same places where you had the maximum freedom in the book. And so if you try to exactly recapture your experience of consumption of the book from the movie, you are bound to fail miserably, since much of what you had imagined has been replaced by how the director imagined such scenes.
So, in conclusion, I'd say that though a movie can be based on some book, it is in itself an entirely new creation, and should never be 'compared' with its inspirational source. Books and movies are two different forms of expression. Movies have only our eyes and ears through which to reach us. Books have the total freedom of directly appealing to our intellect and simulate whatever simulation of all the five senses is most appealing to our persona. Each of us perceives the same descriptions and events in the ways most satisfactory to our mind. And this freedom of visualisation gives rise to a huge mistake people make when going for the movie - they tend to re-capture their experience of the book from the movie. But that is never to be, since the constraints of expression through a movie will inevitably lead to changes in what the users are shown and in what things they are allowed the maximum manoeuvrability for imagination, feeling and perception, compared to what they had in the book. Instead, to enjoy to the movie for what it really is, one should take it as something original and entirely new – and should open himself up for a new experience.
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