A book is a book is a book
A BBC television miniseries based on Dickens’ Bleak House is getting big ratings and rave reviews in Britain, but at least one commentator has no intention of tuning in. In a piece for the Guardian, writer Philip Hensher argues that any adaptation of Dickens’ 1,100-page work will inevitably compromise the novel’s sprawling, inclusive spirit, as well as leaving out at least several of its huge cast of eccentric characters. Hensher then broadens his argument to question the value of any film adaptation: “It isn’t, moreover, just a question of leaving out wonderful little corners of plot, or irresistible characters. It’s really a matter of not doing a 10th of the things a book does. A book can switch into historical narration, dense description, authorial comment. It can, as Bleak House does, alternate between past tense and present tense…. A film can’t do any of this; it is stuck, forever, in the most banal of a novel’s modes, the narration of action and the transcription of dialogue.”
Related links:
Read the Guardian piece on film adaptations
You might be interested in Andrew Davies’ rebuttal from The Guardian. J. Zingrone http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2005/11/09/critical_dedlock.html