Why the Book Is Almost Always Better Than the Movie
Originality is not a virtue often found in Hollywood. This claim is counter-intuitive, of course. Yearly we are ushered into a cinematic world of 3-D creatures, romances with unlikely characters, and thrillers with unexpected killers. The annual profits are staggering when one considers the billions invested in production and earned in ticket sales. Surely the film industry is a place where we can encounter cultural and aesthetic excellence. Yet experience tells us otherwise.
As we peer closer at the Box Office, we discover the lurid, the profane, and the gratuitous [1]. We cautiously scrutinize the films we watch to protect our children (and perhaps us from wasting two hours and $10). However, there is a less obvious but more important phenomenon in much of modern cinema: a lack of originality.
Consider the fact that the majority of the films produced in studios today are based (a) on a novel, (b) on a true story, or (c) on an earlier film. While creative adaptations abound, the basic plot of countless films is typically dependent upon another work. I think that these facts, especially (a) and (b), provide for us a lens for probing a concession that most people make: The novel is almost always better than the film.
This is an important truism because it enjoys overwhelming assent. A reasonable explanation for this revisits an important concept we’re often unaware of: Form and Content. When we compare novels to films based on novels, we must not only evaluate their actual content—though this is relevant to this discussion. Instead, we must analyze these two forms—their limitations, their differences, and our experience of them.
There are three primary aspects of the medium of film that hinder it from accomplishing what the novel can. This is an important discussion not merely for aesthetic purposes. It is also illustrative of an important part of Christianity—the nature of it being a word-centered faith. Comparing the novel to film can help demonstrate some key issues for Christians concerning words versus images.
Knowledge of the Characters
I only need to read a few pages into a novel to decide whether I want to continue reading. Good stories are compelling because they have good characters—though perhaps not morally-speaking. Good characters are interesting, unique, or appealing. Great writers know how to introduce their uncommitted readers to their story’s main players since they are persuaded to continue when they identify with a character.
Screenwriters for films have the same task before them—only they have don’t have the same tools to accomplish this. In novels, authors are often omniscient in telling us the thoughts, feelings, intents, and motivations of the narrative’s characters. Even if it’s just the main character, this still exceeds film’s potentialities. With film, we are typically reduced to reading the minds of characters based solely on their words and deeds [2]. While this seems adequate enough, it typically isn’t. Though it is the way we normally experience the world, it is still unsatisfying in the imaginative activity of watching versus reading.
This is why the novel exceeds cinema in this respect: it clues us as observers/readers into forthcoming twists and turns before they happen—yet we still can’t see them coming because of the complexity of the characters. Ironically, this is actually truer to reality, for humans are complex creatures whose actions fall somewhere between the entirely predictable and totally chaotic.
How 600 Pages Became 90 Minutes
Perhaps a more obvious reason for the parity in excellence of novels versus films is the pace of sequence and story development. This is a challenge for all screenwriters when they attempt to reproduce the character development, plot sequence, and organic tension of a novel into a film that, in most cases, must stay under three hours to meet budget constraints.
Examples abound concerning the success of such enterprises. Based on critic reviews plus box office success (profit), the novel-based films that have been successful have often been in the three-hour range (or have been produced as multiple films). Series such as The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are examples of this. While some complain about the length of these films, they were far more successful than comparable projects.
Certainly length does not necessarily equal success. There are countless other factors that make films excellent or shoddy. Instead, I am suggesting that there is a direct relationship between the nature of the novel and the task of condensing, editing, and fitting a story into a relatively brief visual presentation.
Character development and a well-conceived plot are essential to a good story. Depicting the characters through their actions, words, and motivations takes time. Allowing the plot to develop in a realistic, organic way cannot be easily condensed either. One might even say it requires patience. This is simply a virtue that film does not easily elicit.
The Intangible: Imagination
The imagination is perhaps the most neglected feature of modern American education. Children are lulled into an aesthetic coma by an over-emphasis on SAT test-taking strategies, while reading, writing, and listening to good stories is minimized. Literature, however, is crucial because it engenders the imaginative capabilities and horizons of human beings. Conservatives understand this from the great examples set forth by Tolstoy, Austen, and Lewis. Even good secularists understand this, and thus Shakespeare is common fare in most colleges and universities. Yet little reflection is given to how film often stifles this, as opposed to unlocking it.
The visual presentation proffered by filmmakers confines viewers. They are less apt to bring their imagination to the story. As novelists provide readers with an incredible array of verbal depiction and detail, there is still space for readers to develop their own personal signification by their participation with the story. Although objectivity is certainly possible with the novel, the readers’ subjective experience is involved as they visualize the story as presented and inhabit the gaps with their imagination. Films give a rendering of the story as told by the author (and rewritten by the screenwriter). The cinematic presentation then becomes a brute fact we can accept or reject. Our participation is mostly irrelevant.
Why Christians Should Care
If readers are persuaded by this analysis, then they must begin to consider its implications for Christianity. This is pertinent because Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox traditions have debated heatedly about the role of images in worship. More broadly, however, for thousands of years religions have been partly defined by and divided over whether spiritual things can or should be visually represented.
The Judeo-Christian tradition begins its consideration of such matters with the infamous Golden Calf in Exodus 32. But this is only the beginning. Israel is constantly forbidden to construct an image of Yahweh (Ex. 20:4), as well to gather for herself images of other nations’ gods. Yet Israel fails repeatedly. However, the crucial distinction for God’s people, especially compared to other faiths, is that we worship what we cannot see. This is fundamentally tied to the nature of faith itself [3].
What does this have to do with the novel versus the film? Christians have always been tempted to fashion, venerate, and trust images over words [4]. Yet Baptists particularly have always been a word-oriented people. The discussion of films versus novels anecdotally illustrates the important cautions that Christians should take when it comes to the church’s life.
This discussion has especially had a bearing on debates over the nature of Scripture. Some call for conservatives to repent of their modernistic, western obsession with propositional ways of thinking of truth. This criticism does carry some validity. One example is the crime that some “word-centered folks” commit when dealing with the affective function of biblical texts. It should indeed give us pause when one tries to squeeze every metaphor, whether it be a majestic eagle (Isaiah/Obadiah) or roaring lion (Amos) into a theological proposition. These images are often meant to move us in pre-cognitive ways as opposed to imparting literal information. Certainly images can sometimes translate into propositional statements. However, care should be exercised when doing this [5].
Because film as a medium is limited when compared to a novel, it challenges Christians and innovative church leaders to recognize the risks involved with images. It is always a temptation to think that we need more than Scripture. But images, ironically enough, do not expand our religious horizons. They often confine them. Furthermore, they require a verbal context to be understood. We often say, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Perhaps we should paraphrase: Images require a thousand words of explanation [6].
Conclusion
Despite our penchant for images, Scripture emphasizes the Word as the means for conveying truth. Though Jesus used parables in his ministry, there were verbal in nature. Additionally, they were not used primarily to teach—for the secrets of God’s kingdom were given to the disciples, while to outsiders everything was given in parables to confound them, not to enlighten them [7].
Ultimately, our experience of reading the novel reminds us of a crucial truth: that the Word (Christ) and the word (medium) are God’s gift to the church. Thus, we should steward them accordingly.
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[1] Quentin Tarantino’s films frequently garner rave reviews from film critics and audiences, yet they are arguably the most violent, profanity-laden productions in contemporary cinema. Other directors who would fit this category would include Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and David Lynch.
[2] A notable exception would be those films that include a narrator who gives occasional or frequent voiceovers would be an exception. But even narration in film cannot be as full as descriptions in film.
[3] J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 1973), 44-49.
[4] Two titles have especially shown how this is increasingly true in the postmodern world: David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); Arthur Hunt, The Vanishing Word: The Veneration of the Visual in a Postmodern World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003).
[5] Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s “The Semantics of Biblical Literature: Truth and Scripture’s Diverse Literary Forms” is perhaps the best treatment of this issue from an inerrantist position. It can be found in Carson and Woodbridge’s Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986).
[6] Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), 163-165. Cultural critic Ken Myers offers a helpful illustration in All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes:
“Here are seven simple sentences: 1) The cat is on the mat. 2) The cat is not on the mat. 3) The cat was on the mat. 4) The cat likes to be on the mat. 5) The cat should not be on the mat. 6) Get off the mat, cat! 7) If the cat doesn’t get off the mat, I shall kick it. Of these sentences, only the first could be presented visually, and then only with some uncertainty.”
Myers proceeds convincingly to show how difficult it would be for a person viewing images of these relatively simple actions to come away with an unambiguous interpretation.
[7] Mark 4 clearly spells this out. I’d be willing to grant some credence to the argument that for people already inside the kingdom [believers], spiritual images actually do have some value. However, one would need to quickly qualify this by emphasizing that (1) Christ is the image of the invisible God; (2) ordinances are the chief pictures/images given to the church; and even so, (3) images are limited by their very nature.
* For the sake of space constraints, I was unable to attend to the positive aspects of visual art culturally and spiritually. While this is a corollary discussion to this essay, I feel it merits a separate treatment apart from the concerns here. For more information, see “Assessing the Arts” by Alex Harper and Jackson Watts.
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