As the stunning Dubai International Film Festival gets underway, it once again establishes itself as one of the ‘must-attend’ events on the Dubai calendar and one that the Emirates Literature Foundation is delighted to support. For some, this appears to be something of an unholy alliance. There are misconceptions of a conflict between the moving picture and print; when, in fact, the two media can bring a more complete understanding of the works.
While books remain my first love, I must confess a romantic affair with the big screen too. I had read The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, but it was the film that forced me to read the book once more. I then understood the book at a deeper level and the desert landscapes so eerily and brilliantly captured by Anthony Minghella, the director, added an unforgettable dimension to my own mind’s-eye view. However, I really disliked the film version of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, written by Louis De Bernieres, and loved the novel. When this gifted author attended the first Literary Festival in 2009, many of his readers wanted to know what he thought of the film version of his masterpiece. Louis was very diplomatic and during a page-to-screen discussion, other authors agreed that when the lucrative film rights to the novel were sold, it was best to treat it as giving your ‘baby’ up for adoption. As the author, you have to accept you no longer have a say.
Joseph Conrad’s short story, Heart of Darkness, was dissected, examined and reconstructed as one of cinema’s defining war movies — Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. Conrad’s ivory trader Kurtz, the archetypal evil genius, was transformed into an insane United States Army General during the war in Vietnam, the Congo River was replaced with Cambodia’s Nung waterways and the rest of the parallels drew themselves – even up to the final lines “the horror, the horror”.
So, while the 1979 film certainly helped the story to reach a wider audience than those who had merely read Conrad’s 1899 work, did the film detract from Conrad’s art? Perhaps. And perhaps it has now contributed to an increased readership of the short story.
There are certainly some films that have such a loyal following that there could be a danger of disappointment when reading the original book, post-cinema. Bridget Jones’s Diary has made a huge impact on popular culture and was instrumental in laying the foundations of ‘chic lit’. The Guardian newspaper named it as one of the top ten novels that best defined the 20th century.
But who ‘owns’ Bridget? There is no doubt that author Helen Fielding has every artistic, intellectual and legal claim, but has Renee Zellweger assumed the character to a greater degree than her printed counterpart for modern audiences?
Bridget Jones’s Diary was written in 1995 and six years later came the film for which Zellweger was nominated for Academy Award for Best Actress. The next instalment, Edge of Reason, was released in 2004 and Bridget Jones’s Baby reached our cinemas in 2016. But what is unusual about Bridget’s baby is that it was a literary orphan for the first three weeks of its life — the film was on the big screen nearly a month before the books reached our shelves. (In vitro characterisation?)
To be fair, the third Bridget Jones film bore very little resemblance to the book — including the fact that Darcy (Colin Firth) had risen from the grave.
One of my favourite all-time reads has to be Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. This was not only acclaimed as an outstanding literary work, book critics took into account its potential as a future cinema feature. Time magazine described the work as: ‘An international bestseller and the basis for the hugely successful film.’ I cannot untangle the characters in the book — Randall McMurphy, Nurse Ratched, Chief Bromden — from the actors who so movingly brought them to life in the film. The novel sold more than nine million copies since it was first published in the early 1960s and thanks to the incredible film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphy, it has meant that this novel has been rightly recognised as one of the great classics in literature.
It was a similar story for Stephen King and his horror classic The Shining. King has always had a loyal following of millions and with 53 novels to his name, is one of the best-known modern authors of our time. Once again Jack Nicholson was the villain of the piece and rather than just lift sales of The Shining, many of Stephen King’s works became must-have additions to bookshelves around the western world.
If we take a small step back in time and a giant stride back in genres, one of the most appealing aspects of our own Emirates Literature Foundation and the Dubai International Film Festival offer a cross-pollination of our audiences. Among the many wonderful films on offer this year, Swallows and Amazons will be a very special treat. The original book, written by Arthur Ransome and published in 1930, is an adventure story that should be a part of every child’s library, irrespective of whether he or she was born in the 1920s or the 2000s. Ransome, himself a spy, has now been immortalised on the screen by director Philippa Lowthorpe as well as on the page. Reviews have been highly favourable. The Guardian says: “Swallows and Amazons was always treasured for its innocent charm ... nothing rivals the very real catastrophe of the children’s wicker basket full of picnic food being lost overboard.” The Telegraph describes the act of a boy gutting a fish he has caught as “the moment has a rosy-cheeked realness to it — as tangible as fresh air blowing through your hair — that catches in an instant why the film works as well as it does”.
Variety, on the other hand, brings a far more contemporary summary of the film/literary relationship. It describes the adaptation as “the fictional England to which many Britons who voted for Brexit aspire to return”.
Isobel Abulhoul is OBE, CEO and trustee of the Emirates Literature Foundation and director of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
