Books and Movies

Last night, the boys and I watched "Caddie Woodlawn", which I found on DVD at the library. You may remember that we finished reading that book aloud a few months ago, and the boys really loved it. When I brought it home, I told Bob that I am always so hopeful about movies taht come from books, but usually I am so disappointed. No matter what this one was, it would be good for the boys--either it would be just like the book, and they would love it, or it would be totally different, and they would learn an important lesson about how the book is usually so much better.

Well, this movie definitely fell in the second category! Nathan's first comment was "She doesn't look anything at all like I imagined her to look like!" LOL! The movie wasn't a bad movie at all, and maybe it would appeal if one hadn't read the book. But the book is so interesting and humorous, and the movie was nothing like that. I guess I will never understand why directors feel they need to arbitrarily change around characters, plot details, and so on. There were so many changes in this movie that added no value! People died who did not die in the book, and for no reason, really. Events happened in completely different orders, again for no reason. The thing that bugged me the most was how they changed the actual character of one of the main characters in the book. Robert Ireton was the Woodlawns' hired man. He was from Ireland, and he loved to play his banjo and sing funny songs, and tell funny stories. In the movie, however, he was an incredible bigot who spread terrible rumors about the Indians, almost massacred a bunch of them, and tried to keep little half breed boys out of the house! Umm, no. There were random townsfolks with those sort of attitudes, but not Robert Ireton. This book and movie is based on a true story--what if you were a descendent of his, and this was how a movie portrayed him, with absolutely no evidence to back it up?! That really bothered me. When we finally reached the end of the movie, Nathan said, "Why didn't they just make the movie like the author wrote it? It was a GOOD book!" I agree.

That got me thinking--what movies out there are good and faithful adaptations of the books from which they come? The only one I can think of that I have actually seen is the BBC production of "Pride and Prejudice". That miniseries perfectly captures how I imagined it should be! I haven't seen the new movie, so I don't know for myself how it compares, but I have my doubts. It's not 6 hours long, for one thing, so I know they chopped out a lot and changed around some lines. I haven't seen "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" either. I know there are some differences, but it sounds like they tried to be pretty true to the book. Directors (or whoever is in charge of these things) should not assume they could have written a better book, and so so completely change things that the final movie product bears no resemblence to the book!