Hollywood is notorious for converting novels into screenplays which bear little, if any, resemblance to the original book.
A number of movies about Hollywood have had subversive fun with this “corruption by adaptation,” mocking the pretentions of studio executives and snooty authors alike (my favorite is The Last Tycoon, the film of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel).
Some beloved novels are translated to the screen with as little alteration or interpretation as possible (the Lord of the Rings triology comes to mind), and readers can savage if the movie plot doesn’t track to the original.
Sometimes the adaption is so profound that the only thing the book and movie share in common is the title. There’s a middle ground, as well, where the screenplay borrows heavily from the original work but twists it in new ways.
The recent science fiction film Children of Men is based on the P.D. James novel of the same name. It is one of several dystopian fictions popular these days (see here for more on this interest in Doomsday). Director Alfonso Cuarón and four additional writers (Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby) are listed as screenwriters (not usually a good sign for those hoping for artistic coherence).
This team of screenwriters takes the basics of James’s story—a authoritarian Great Britain in 2027 where no children have been born for 18 years, a protagonist, Theo, who is asked by members of a shadowy resistance group to help shield a miraculously pregnant woman from the authorities—and proceeds to layer on themes of race, immigration, politics, and terrorism while altering the relationships of the main characters. It’s a bit muddled, although there’s enough oomph in the story (a version of The Quest) to carry us along.
James’s novel has some very tough things to say about the willingness of humans to trade off freedom and tolerance for security and order—in the film that is lost, as well as the book’s sharp commentary on the lust for power found in all of us and countervailing pull of religious faith, specifically traditional Christianity.
The endings of the two works highlight the artistic differences. The film settles for a romantic sacrifice to save the life of mother and child. The novel ends with a much different act of violence—an assassination and Theo’s willingness to use power to protect those he loves. James’s vision that in a fallen world there can be no cheap grace—more Bonhoeffer than box office—is definitely lost in commercial translation.
Writing; Movies; P.D. James; Children of Men ;Alfonso Cuarón
Copyright © 2007 Jefferson Flanders
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