The trauma of adapting a book to the big screen

As a bookworm and a filmbuff, as well as a librarian trying to keep up to date with what's happening in the literary world, it's hard to ignore the furore currently being carried on in the media about the screen adaptation of award winning novel The Vintner's Luck by Kiwi Elizabeth Knox. In the interests of keeping our blog readers informed (and on the basis that part of the reason for this blog is to keep Rodney Libraries users up to date with current issues), here are some links for you to read about it.

Author Elizabeth Knox is upset that the movie adaptation has changed the emphasis of the novel away from what she created. Read the Dominion Post article where she revealed that she cried after seeing the movie and how much it departed from her book.

The movie itself has received mixed reviews, including some reasonably strong critical panning. This is itself, would not prevent me from going to see the movie. In fact, I have often found that movies that have received the harshest reviews, are those that I enjoy the most - just call me a film heathen. Examples of reviews include one from the Dominion Post, this one from The National Business Review and this from the TV3 website. This will give you an example of how varied opinions are, which is really just an indication that everyone is different - which is a good thing, isn't it?

The Vintner's Luck (and the sequel Angel's Cut) are extremely popular titles at Rodney Libraries and it can be difficult to find them on the shelf. I have to be honest and say that The Vintner's Luck isn't my favourite book (I much prefer Elizabeth's Dreamhunter series), but it was still a good enough read. The key to much of the discussion, is in most cases books have to be adapted to the movie screen. The best a film can often do is keep to the spirit of the book. If this movie does move away from the main story of the book as much as reported, perhaps it should have been described as being "based on the book by..." and there wouldn't have been so much debate.

However, I wouldn't let the reviews or the deviation from the book put you often going to see the movie, or the purported deviation in the movie put you off reading the book. As for myself, I probably will go to see the movie, simply because I want to draw my own conclusions.