nothing visual does any work when the play is adapted to the movie format.
I would like to think nothing visual does any work when the play is poorly adapted to the movie format.
For some reason I can swear I can hear it in the delivery of the lines, which makes no sense, especially if it's not the stage actors reprising their roles. The most egregious I can think of was
Jeffrey
and the least-but-still-bothersome
was
Six Degrees of Separation.
I know there's at least one where I was thoroughly impressed, but I can't remember which. Oh, and for sure others I never knew were adaptations in the first place, so I can't cite them for not bothering me.
I thought History Boys adapted to the screen very well. There were significant changes made to the script, but they also made sure to use locations as film locations and not shoot it as if they were still working with a proscenium.
Bug
used location and imagery very cinematically, so mad props to Friedkin. Some of the words still felt a but stagy, but not enough to make me dislike it.
Closer struck me as very well adapted to its new medium, though still relentlessly talky.
Did anyone see
Tsotsi
(about a gangster kid in one of the Johannesburg townships, maybe Soweto)? That movie felt very much like a play to me. It wasn't so much about the dialogue, but more the structure & arc of the story. Which sort of makes sense, given that it's adapted from a novel by the playwright Athol Fugard.
Closer struck me as very well adapted to its new medium, though still relentlessly talky.
That's one that
really
felt like a play to me, I think, because of all the talkiness. And the abrupt time changes that weren't explained to me by the playbill.
I liked
Tsotsi.
I haven't read the novel, but I have read Athol Fugard's teleplay for "The Occupation," and that was very stageplay-like in terms of the dialogue. I never thought of
Tsotsi
as playlike, but I see what you mean.
So, we're watching
Jaws
on cable this afternoon, and even though I've long been a fan of the film, I'm astounded at how well it holds up after 32 years.
Also, Robert Shaw's monologue about the Indianapolis remains one of the all time great movie monologues.
It's true about Jaws. And about Shaw's monologue. Jaws is, what? the fourth most quoted movie?
I just watched it again recently, and yeah. It seemed like a throwaway when it came out, but it's a solid flick.
