I've noticed that somebody has made a movie of the book Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I haven't seen the movie yet but no doubt it will be a disappointment.
I read this book only because I've been in awe of Marquez since reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. I wouldn't rank it as one the the all time great novels and I'm certainly surprised that it's been chosen for a cinematic adaption.
We all know that great books always disappoint when they are interpreted into movies. My greatest disappointment was watching the Tin Drum based on a book by Gunther Grass, a book I truly loved from start to finish and found that the movie only told half the story. There was never a part II to finish off what the movie began.
What really surprises me is how many great stories are just waiting to be made into movies, literally hundreds and yet never get made. What is even more puzzling is that so many movies lack a good plot, and that good plot is there for the taking, if only somebody would read a book every once in a while.
It seems that the people who are involved in making movies don't really like to read books.What other conclusion can there be?
2 comments:
I know what you mean. I saw part of Love in...but fell asleep as usual. I haven't read the book but I will definitely search it out now that you've recommended it. I always prefer a book over the movie. There's just a lot more information that can be conveyed and it appeals to your imagination to flesh it out. A movie is how someone else pictured it, simplified. Rare to have the entire story and rarer to have it match how you saw it. Because some books are so complex, they don't transfer to video well. Crichton's books generally do but he knows how to write with that consideration in mind. I figure people who don't like to read have trouble of some sort with it - a learning disability or comprehension or memory problem. For them, a movie is the best they have.
Jeannie, as always we agree.
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