Inside Outside

Over at Nautilus, a site I didn't read as much as I should have during the Long Sleep, writer Erik Hoel suggests why novels are a richer form of storytelling than are movies.

Hoel's answer is pretty straightforward. It's pretty tough to get inside the minds of the people we meet or read about in the news. Even when they tell us what's on their minds, we can get only the small piece that they intend to share. But not only can we not get any of the unspoken parts of their minds and hearts, we can't know how much of what they have said is accurate. We can't know if they simply spoke in error or from a lack of knowledge or if they flat-out lied.

Although movies might try to get behind the barrier with narration, skillful acting or flashbacks, we're still required to guess what's going on. An actress weeps and depending on her skill we might know why the character in the story is supposed to cry. Hoel says such knowledge is shallower than that available in novels.

In novels, Hoel says, we are presented with fictional characters whose motivation is laid bare by the author. The story shows us why they do what they do -- unless of course the writer's a hack, but that's a whole different problem. This could be one reason we so often say that the book is better than a movie made from it -- because the book had a flavor of the imagination that the movie could not have. 

There's a lot to this, I think. On the other hand, a skillful script and director can do some things more quickly and efficiently that a novelist can. The novelist can describe Penny's inner struggle over re-starting an affair with Maverick. The battle between desire and genuine feeling set against the bad experiences of the past and Maverick's own here-today-gone-tomorrow lifestyle. And then relay her decision.

But the writers, director and actress Jennifer Connelly, with less than a minute of screen time, just a few lines and a very important door, can indeed convey what is going on inside Penny's head with extreme clarity. My survey sample is every guy I know who says, "ohhh," when we discuss the movie and anyone brings up the open door. The door, for those unaware, is the one Penny leaves open after Maverick has given her a ride home on his motorcycle. It's a door she shut after an earlier ride.

I guess my take is that when a movie is made sui generis, without any adaptation, skill can bring us to the hidden space inside a character's head and heart -- because there's no deeper understanding around to make a comparison. But when a novel is around to show the depth a great writer can unmask, the movie may be great, but it will fall short. Every musical or movie made based on Les Misérables, whether awesome, awful or indifferent, does not repay the work of fighting through about 1,200 pages of the novel.

Of course, for me sometimes the opposite happens too. I've watched the Kevin Coster, Robert Duval, Annette Bening movie Open Range more often than I can count. I've read Lauran Paine's The Open Range Men exactly once.