Unwatchable Films and Unfilmable Books, Part II: Source VS Adaptation
I have enjoyed more poorly reviewed movies than I care to admit. Some due to the fact that I love junk, and some due to the fact that I genuinely thought they were alright movies that other people were hopping on the bandwagon of trashing. There were two recently that I, having seen the movies prior to reading the books, thought most critics were being unfair towards and (in some cases) downright nasty about the quality of these adaptations. It was only after I read the books that I understood some of the vitriol: the problem wasn’t with the films as standalone pieces–because on their own, they’re weird and confusing but entertaining–but the root of the problem was simply already in the source material. How do you begin to approach source material that’s weird and confusing, yet powerful, moving, and hard to forget?
London Fields by Martin Amis is something of a cult book–it’s not some beloved classic that gets trotted out in academia or used ad nauseum in references. For my money, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read but it’s grim and nihilistic and supports an embrace of both those aspects. Its characters are slimy, wimpy, and desperate to varying degrees. The women of the book paint a pretty upsetting portrait of existence inside a female body. Again, I love this book. Had I read it prior to seeing the movie, I most certainly would have been disappointed, but also aware that the text is great because of the unfilmable nature of it.
The character of Nicola Six is a new-age femme fatale who doesn’t care if she’s the fatality. In fact, that’s her entire goal: goading along three men in hopes that one of them will kill her. The version of London she lives in is crumbling away–hardly sustaining life as it is. Options are limited to everyone but even more so to her. Women in this reality are relegated to mothers, wives, shrews, and sex objects; Nicola is someone who doesn’t want to be any of those. She crafts an identity that will achieve her endgame, one that she is sure will happen though she doesn’t quite know how.
In the movie version of London Fields (2018), the film noir quality of the book is a lot more obvious from the onset. It places the hardboiled men and devious women (or woman) in an anachronistic dream world where the sky is always changing color and everything is always wet. Seeing the movie prior to reading the book, I was pretty enchanted with the visuals. There was a surreal, just-left-of-reality feel, with scene-chewing magic performances. I’m no huge fan of Amber Heard, but I thought she did an admirable job with a character that was bound to become flat without all the internal monologue. Nicola Six does get ironed down to a male fantasy in the film adaptation since that’s her foundation; in the book, she subverts the “fantasy” label to the reader but not the other characters. Jim Sturgess plays Keith Talent, a cartoon version of a working class sleazebag, who has layers and complications in the novel but becomes a stereotype of a leech after being stripped of his tiered arc.
Ultimately, a book that consisted of psychic visions, endless back story, and the contents of literally every character’s head came out as a campy, overwrought dreamscape. (Not gonna lie, I’m still here for it.)
The other big critical failure of a book adaptation has a bit of a different problem. It was so ambitious, and wanted so badly to honor the source material, that it wound up stuffing every second with importance and therefore turning everything into noise. It was made with an appreciation and understanding of the novel but without the insight that this might be a truly impossible task to bring to life via a two-and-a-half hour movie. I’m putting off announcing that the second selection is Cloud Atlas (2012) on account of how many people have gotten mad at me when I said I kinda liked it.
Again, seeing the film prior to reading this book has its benefits. One of those benefits is that you don’t know how good the book is. Watching Cloud Atlas without reading it allows you to appreciate its noble (if not entirely successful) attempt to bring a sprawling story to life. It has to move through time, alternate realities, and characters that are important to everything while still being coherent and visually interesting. No easy feat, and if anyone can do it, it’d be those wacky Wachowski sisters.
Well, turns out nobody can do it. The long, involved novel of Cloud Atlas is unfilmable because of the vastness it offers the reader. The time we spend in each of the stories and how they interconnect is hard to boil down. My hope is that with the golden age of mini series upon us, someone takes another shot at adapting this in a format where there’s space to bring all the levels and intricacies. It does seem like the Wachowskis did something similar, and successfully so, with Sense8, which might be closest we’re going to get to a solid visual version of Cloud Atlas. But ya know what? I was still pretty into the movie.
I understand why people were quick to snub these films, and I’m not saying those opinions are wrong or even that these movies are misunderstood masterpieces. My point is that taken on their own, they are interesting and unusual works. But comparing them to their brilliant source material is bound to bring disappointment. It’s kind of like expecting a fish to move as fast on land. In the case of Cloud Atlas, I don’t think a film version is entirely out of the question but it might have to be something with several parts. London Fields is more like Naked Lunch: a book I think is genuinely unfilmable so maybe the version we got is the best it’s going to get.
