Page-To-Film: The Princess Bride.

The Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies. It has some great dry wit, humor, memorable characters and lines. So for a long time I was wary of reading the book it was based on, simply by the almost always true rule that the book is better than the movie. I didn't want the movie to be ruined by reading the book. But now I've read the book... and I don't think I had all that much to worry about.

As usual, let me start off by discussing the book. Like the movie, the book presents itself with two narratives (though the book's first narrative is a bit different). In the book, William Goldman sets up a gimmick. As a boy, William Goldman loved sports, had ADHD, and had no use for books. But then he came down with Pneumonia, and his father decided to read him a book called The Princess Bride, an epic Florinese novel by a man named S. Morgenstern. The book changed his life. He becomes an avid reader and, later, an author himself. He has his own wife and son now (who he's constantly degrading, but we'll get to that later), and he wants his son to experience The Princess Bride like he did. But his son couldn't even get through chapter two. And when Mr. Goldman sits down to read the book, he discovers why: this isn't much at all like he remembered it as a boy. There are endless pages of Florinese history and pointless passages of description that the scholars see as classic satire, but which he sees as dull. So Goldman sets out to write an abridged version of the book, the "good parts" version, cutting out all that pointless or dull stuff. And this is the book's gimmick. Every now and then within the book, there are short interruptions (in italics) where Goldman explains something has been cut and why, or he'll give a story of why his father had skipped these passages in reading to him in the first place and the conversations they had at these points in time.

But we also have the "main" story, which is that of true love, adventure, etc. I'm not really going to bother explaining it because, well, if you don't know the story of The Princess Bride, shame on you.

So how is the book? It's pretty good. The first 30 or so pages, though, is pure ADHD setup of the gimmick, bouncing back and forth between stories of Goldman's life--childhood and adult--and how he both learned to love reading and how he got to this current point in his life. But then it picks up and the real story begins.

The writing style is something you'll either love or hate. There are a lot of fun "statistics" (much like the movie's "there have been 5 great kisses...", which actually is in the book, though around the middle instead of the end). He also uses an incredibly amount of polysyndeton (where he connects many things with 'and' and it seems like a run-on sentence, when it fact it's just a really long one. It's a stylistic thing that most authors don't use anymore. You mainly see it in older works anymore. Hemingway did it frequently, as well). And there are a lot of parentheticals where it'll say something like (this was before THIS but long after THAT), some of which weren't historically accurate, some of which were, but that was the point (at least according to the abridged notes). And then there are the abridged notes themselves, which I didn't find nearly as annoying or tiring as I've read in other reviews. In fact, the majority of them end up in the movie in some form or fashion (with the sick grandson/grandfather bits).

There was really only one thing that surprised me about the book: it was mean. From either characters or Goldman himself, there was a surprising amount of misogyny, superficiality (primarily with women), racism, anti-Semitism, cynicism, and just all around insult-tossing. Honestly, the mix of the "true love" stuff, "perfect beauty" talk, and mistreating of women, there were numerous times I kept flashing back to Twilight, which was really rather painful to even think about making that comparison. Though, thankfully, the difference is that William Goldman can actually write, and write very well. And his characters are actually likeable--when they aren't being uncharacteristically angry for, sometimes, no reason. And that was another strange thing. There were few times in the movie where the characters seemed angry or upset. In the book, they got angry quite a bit, yelling, insulting, etc. Though some of the "angry" lines went to the screen and were acted with wit instead of anger, which is much better, in my opinion.

And to top it all off, the book has a horrible ending... if you can really call it an ending. The "Princess Bride" story just kind of ends (and the "unabridged" ending that's shown is also terrible and such a downer), but it ends with more abridged notes after that... which ends with such a cynicism that it nearly destroys the feel good "true love conquers all" mood of the rest of it.

But then we have the movie. If the book is the abridged "good parts" version of the S. Morgenstern work, then the movie is the "good parts" version of the abridged work. And ironically, the movie was also written by William Goldman. But besides even the writing, the casting is perfect. Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant, Wallace Shawn, Christopher Guest, Chris Sarandon, Billy Crystal (et al)... perfect.

Now, don't get me wrong, in retrospect, there are some things better about the book, and some things better about the movie. But for the most part, this is an incredibly close adaptation. Some lines were altered from the book for the movie just slightly (mostly when things had to be condensed), and for the better. But there were also entire lines and scenes that were a bit different from the book that I actually prefer in the film (most specifically, how Westley presents the story of the Dread Pirate Roberts to Buttercup both before and during the Fire Swamp... in the book, it's not even brought up until after Buttercup realizes the man in black is Westley and they're in the Fire Swamp).

So what did the book do better? Character backgrounds. The movie, of course, briefly touches on Inigo's history in terms of his father and his revenge. But there's so much more in the book. Not to mention Fezzik's story is almost all but removed entirely (there are certain points where you can get bits and pieces, such as Fezzik's nearly indiscernible speech to Westley about fighting one person versus groups, or Vizzini threatening to send him back to Greenland). And because Fezzik's character is played down a bit, there's a line at the end that doesn't make too much sense and seems out of place, where Inigo says "You've done something right." Also, I was surprised how how much more rhyming there was in the book than the movie. But I'm rambling now.

Buttercup, Vizzini, Humperdinck, and Count Rugen also have more details to them than the movie grants. Actually, the movie takes what has to be the first 100 or so pages of the book and condenses it down into about 7 minutes. And what else to these characters have in common? They're actually less likable (including Buttercup) in the book. For Buttercup, that's a bad thing, but for the latter three, it's good... for the book, anyway. Primarily Humperdinck and Rugen, they seem much more villainous and dastardly in the book. Rugen is more calmly psychotic (he's really a great and disturbing character, and Christopher Guest played him brilliantly for what he was given). And Humperdinck's hunting skills are hugely downplayed in the movie.

In fact, that brings us to the biggest cut/change from book to film. The book's Zoo of Death becomes the film's Pit of Despair (not to mention The Albino's personality shifts completely for the little screen time he has, though I think for the better). The Zoo of Death is a 5-level containment area, where each level gets more and more dangerous. Humperdinck keeps the world's most dangerous animals there, and depending on what he feels like hunting at the time, he'll have The Albino go and get it for him, and he'll hunt it then and there. The only empty level is the fifth level, saved for the most dangerous animal, which he hasn't discovered yet. Turns out, this is where Westley is held later, what the movie turns into the Pit of Despair. Though the only real reason to have kept it in the movie would be the scene where Inigo and Fezzik have to travel through it to get to Westley, though those descriptions in the book were rather confusing and not nearly as exciting as it could have been (there were hippos and lions, and they end up fighting a giant snake and some bats).

All in all, the book is a good companion piece to the film, filling in some blanks to help things make more sense (though they made sense to me until I read the book, then I realized that there were just some things that were only touching the surface of what was really there). Of course, there are more things than I've mentioned, but nothing drastically important.

I suppose when looking at the two, I must say that the movie is better than the book. The movie does have some great things in it, primarily the more extensive character details, but the best parts of the book come in the humor and dialogue, most of which comes off word-for-word in the movie (seriously, as I said, this was a close adaptation). I did like the statistics in the book, though. If you like/love the movie, I'd suggest reading the book at least once. It really is a really good book. I just happen to prefer the movie.

Page-To-Film: Battle Royale.

Well, I haven’t done one of these in a while (technically this will be the second one, even though the review for Blindness was similarly written). The last time I did this, I reviewed the short story and film versions of Rashomon. This time, I’m taking yet another Japanese story and film: Battle Royale. The book, which came out in 1999, was at first highly controversial, though it quickly became a huge hit, making all the best-seller lists. The very next year, it began being translated into a series of graphic novels/mangas, and, within that same year, became a movie. From what I’ve read, all three are different from each other, but I have yet to experience the mangas, so I couldn’t tell you for those. However, just by experiencing the book and the film, I can agree that they do have some pretty big differences.

But let me first start off by discussing what the story is about (first the book). The story is an allegory for the transition of teenage school life into the cut-throat world of Japanese business. In an alternative future where America is a third-world country and Japan has become a massively strict dictatorship, the government has set up a program in which one class of fifteen-year-old students is chosen to participate in The Program, which sets them in a deserted area and forces them to kill each other off until there is only one left. Shiroiwa Junior High School Class B has just been selected to be the next class to participate. They are put on a small island that has been evacuated from all inhabitants. Each of them (all 42, with 21 males and 21 females) has a metal collar around his or her neck wherein it can be detonated if they start to do something against the rules and/or government, if they try to escape, or if they get caught in a Forbidden Zone—areas of the island that are announced with the newly dead every 6 hours that are forbidden to be in after that point in time. Along for the ‘game’ is Shuya Nanahara, a young boy who lost both his parents and just wants to get out alive with all of his friends; Noriko Nakagawa, a young girl who gets injured early on and struggles to stay alive and innocent with her secret crush; Shogo Kawada, a mysterious new transfer student with a scarred-up face and an interest in both Shuya and Noriko; Hiroki Sugimura, a sweet boy who just wants to find two different girls; and Shinji Mimura, a friend of Shuya’s that is incredibly popular and incredibly smart. And then there are the more sinister of the bunch, including troubled female Mitsuko Soma and insane psychopath Kazuo Kiriyama. The rules state there can only be one survivor, but Shogo insists he can help get him, Shuya, and Noriko off the island alive. The only issue is that they have to wait until they’re the only ones left… if they can survive that long.

The book was absolutely amazing. It’s now one of my favorite books. A lot of people, as I’ve read, have some issues with the English translation, but outside of a few typos or missing words here and there, I found no real huge issues. It’s not incredibly descriptive in the scenery or action/violence, but I think the point was more in that it was actually happening instead of every minute detail of the occurrences. Though it did get confusing in the action at times, especially toward the end when there’s a big car chase. I had a very difficult time trying to picture what the heck was going on. And unfortunately, all of that is cut from the movie, so I have no visual reference there, either.

The only other thing of note from the narrative would be the narration itself. It’s interesting in the way that the book switches from third person to first person interchangeably, allowing for the reader to see inside a specific character’s mind at that moment. So at one point you have a third person narrator, then out of nowhere it’ll start in with ‘I’ with first person. Though it never got confusing, at least for me, because each section really focused on one main person at a time. And that’s another great thing about the book; it had an incredible character focus. Each and every one of the 42 students had a background and a story to go with them. Most of them were interconnected either as friends or enemies or even secret crushes (and there were numerous).

And unfortunately, this is where the movie brings its first major issue. Obviously, it can’t focus on 42 different characters like the book can, but it didn’t even keep the same kind of feel for some of the characters. Shogo, who was my favorite character in the book, was much less mysterious and much less cool in the movie than he was in the book. Hiroki, who was another one of my favorites, had much less of an importance in the movie than the book, and he also lost his best character quality because of his lack of screen time—his unstoppable devotion. And the mystery of why he was hunting down the second of the two girls was played out much more in the book, though I do think the eventual scene that occurs was done quite well in the film. Shinji’s character was reduced to almost non-existent, Shuya became incredibly whiny, and any and all background or explanation for Kazuo was just left out. Mitsuko, however, was done rather decently, and a scene that’s in the director’s cut (the version I watched) that helps explain to those who haven’t read the book a bit about her past (though it is altered quite a bit) isn’t in the normal version, which would be disappointing to those who don’t watch the director’s cut. On the upside, although they changed the teacher/director character completely from the book to the film (it is not a former teacher or any of that in the book), I like how they added more humanity and even some pity to his character in the film. There was more depth to that character in the film than in the book.

But I think the biggest issue with all of these character changes came from trying to turn a 600+ page book into a two-hour movie. And while those two hours moved by incredibly fast (didn’t even feel like two hours), the whole movie felt like how the first fifteen-to-twenty minutes of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire went (200 pages of book crammed into that tiny period). It had a lot of tiny bits of information of characters and scenarios here and there, and those were always fun to catch as a reader of the book, but it still left out or altered too much. For instance, the huge explosion and the scene that leads up to it at the end of the movie occurs around the two-thirds mark of the book… not the climax. And the final showdown with Kazuo was incredibly lame in the movie in comparison to the book… not to mention because of its incredible alteration, one of my favorite (and one of the most powerful, I think) lines in the book wasn’t in the movie. I don’t want to list all the alterations and discrepancies between the two works, but I will list one more major one that was left out: the anti-government and rock-n-roll stuff. That all played such an enormous part of the book, and besides one scene where you see Shuya playing guitar in a flashback, there’s no mention of it whatsoever, and that also took away from the power of the ending, making it more cheesy because it didn’t rely back on a major theme.

Now, I didn’t hate the movie. I just felt that while the book had a more powerful feeling behind it, the movie was reduced to almost nothing more than a common action movie. But looking at the movie as a movie instead of an adaptation, it was pretty entertaining. It wasn’t super gory or anything, and the blood was more along the lines of Quentin Tarantino (you can tell it’s fake, and it’s in excess at certain moments to make a point). The action was pretty good, though the character development (even looking at it from a non-adaptation standpoint) could have used some work. As I said, at least in the director’s cut, the teacher and Mitsuko’s characters were handled pretty well. Noriko was similar to how she was in the book (she’s more of a symbol than anything), though the danger level of her survival is much more suspenseful in the book (the book plays up on her initial wound and possible infection from it much more than the movie, which takes roughly one minute to tackle that whole issue). Shogo could have been done a lot better. He’s not shown enough to where you can get a good sense of his character before the big end reveal. And Shuya… he seemed to be more of a prop in the movie than anything. The other major characters, such as Hiroki and Shinji, were dwindled down to mere plot devices. And I think with a lot of the stuff the writer of the film tried to put into the movie version might confuse some of the people who hadn’t read the book version, because there were some things that were brought up or shown but never explained.

One last thing to bring up is the music (and the cinematography). I figured, from the book, the music would be some old school rock songs, but as that whole theme was removed from the film, they used a lot of classical music or orchestral music. And I have to say, for the most part, I really enjoyed that choice. Though some of the time it was too much and took me out of the scene, but overall, I really liked how the music was done for this film. That just really struck me as something to mention, as I don’t bring up music often enough in film reviews. And to touch on the cinematography briefly… nothing special, though the scene toward the end with the fire after the explosion was pretty cool looking.

So I suppose a final verdict should be called for. For the book, I’d highly recommend it. It really is an amazing read. Therefore, to use my movie rating scores, I'd give the book the following (rating title - no pun intended):

Royale With Cheese

As an adaptation, I give it the following score:

Feed Me, Seymour!

As a film, ignoring the original source, I give it the following score:

I Am McLovin!

Page-To-Film: Rashomon.

I know I just did DVDs Or Death!, but since it was relatively short, I figured I could hand out something of substance, as well. Not to mention the slightly ironic timing due to the movie coming out on DVD this week...

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So yesterday, I finally got around to seeing my first Akira Kurosawa film, but not before reading the two short stories it’s based on. I read both stories, “Rashomon” and “In a [Bamboo] Grove” (depending on the translation) in roughly 30 minutes before moving on to the film. I must say that this is one of the closest adaptations to a work of literature (or works, in this case) that I’ve ever seen.

Kurosawa’s Rashomon takes elements from both stories: The location, descriptions, and tonal tidbits from “Rashomon,” and the plot and characters from “In a Grove.” There are only two major differences in the movie: First, the fourth ‘narrative/flashback’ in the movie was added (most likely to add more time to the film), and the baby in the Rashomon at the end was also added, but it was moreso taking the place of an old woman that the Servant finds in the short story of “Rashomon.” Otherwise, everything was almost word-for-word, dialogue and descriptions taken nearly verbatim from the text (even from “Rashomon,” although the plot and characters are from “In a Grove”). The only thing they cut from “In a Grove,” as far as I’m aware, is the woman’s mother’s testimony, which wasn’t really necessary to begin with.

To start with the acting, the only thing I didn’t care for was the immensely over-acting of the actor who played the criminal, Tajomaru. The excessive bouncing and hysterical laughing was even more outlandish than The Monkey King from The Forbidden Kingdom. And the woman who played the wife was good, but her crying quickly got on my nerves (not the fact that she was crying, but the sound of it). But besides the incredible amount of over-the-top laughter and crying, the acting was excellent, even from the previously mentioned characters (when they weren’t doing those things). I just felt that the character of Tajomaru, when reading the story, was more reserved and frightening in a quiet kind of way. The movie version was the exact opposite. I also liked how Kurosawa turned two of the smallest roles in “In a Grove,” the Wood Cutter and the Priest, and made them into central characters. And Kurosawa even went into more detail on who actually took the knife from the chest of the man, which the short story didn’t.

Visually speaking, the movie had some wonderful camera work and shots. I watched an introduction to the movie by Robert Altman, who noted that Kurosawa was the first person to ever point a camera directly at the sun, which I found fascinating. The mood set by the rain was also brilliantly done (even though the rain was taken from the “Rashomon” story).

But one of my favorite moments, both visually and acted, was the Medium channeling the spirit of the man. For an old black and white movie, that scene really creeped me out. It was just so well done with the wind blowing her outfit all around with her hair and covering her face, and the look on the face of the old woman… it was just really unsettling. Not to mention the man’s echoing voice on top of that coming from her mouth. It creeped me out more than The Exorcist ever did (which wasn’t much).

The thing that sets the story and movie off from others that pull this multiple-perspective narrative is that all the movies to come after it tell the exact same story as truth from multiple perspectives. This one, on the other hand, tells the same story in multiple perspectives, but treats them as lies. So by the end of the movie, instead of having something revealed to you, you’re left to think about which one was actually the true occurrence (or as Robert Altman put it, all of them and none of them were true). It’s a story to think about, where not all of the answers are just given up to you. And with a layer underneath that, you have the social commentary of the lies and lives of men and what is needed to be done to survive (this part of the story mostly taken from the “Rashomon” short story).

So while some of the acting could have seemed over-the-top at times, even though it’s most likely a cultural thing, it’s really overshadowed by the basic concept and theme of the film. And on top of that, it really was, as I said, one of the best page-to-film adaptations I’ve ever seen. Now I need to check out Seven Samurai…

Royale With Cheese