The Medium

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion eloquently and elegantly describes the time following the sudden death of her husband (writer John Dunne). When you read the book (or listen to it, in my case . . . I have a long commute), which is nothing short of unflinchingly honest and beautifully lyrical, you’re surprised by her admission that she didn’t think she could write about what she was feeling in those post-death days - those days after life changed "in the instant." Rather, she recalls thinking if only she had film and editing equipment, she could organize her thoughts and memories properly; that her particular kind of grief required image and sound—moving snapshots of a lifetime together. Of course, she did eventually write about it and the result is a type of written photo album capturing her very soul, with events and places meticulously described and feelings framed, labeled and on display. It is nothing short of gorgeous.
So on my drive to work today (on a “highway” that, I kid you not, I’ve had to stop on more than once to let chickens cross . . . we’re quite rural here in Northern California, a point Ms. Didion would no doubt appreciate, having grown up Sacramento when it was still farmland) I thought about storytelling and the various mediums through which it is achieved. And I came to a conclusion . . . the medium can make or break the story. I still have my doubts about Revolutionary Road as a movie. The book is replete with self-observation and inner dialogue. How will this translate? Will the movie have voice-over narration? Will it be Leonardo DiCaprio’s voice? If so, can he manage to remove the slight twang that accompanies so many of his spoken words (even, unfortunately, when he’s attempting a decidedly un-twang-y accent. See, Blood Diamond). As for The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion’s story is so intensely personal I can't imagine it would resonate in film quite as much as it does in print. In fact, Ms. Didion turned the book into a stage play, which is the perfect complementary medium to an intimate, one-narrator, first-person, personal tale of emotion.
But you already know that I have some concerns about turning books into movies. Here’s my epiphany for the day. Technically, it’s my second epiphany, the first being that it’s pointless to iron a linen shift and then sit in the car for an hour. In any event, here’s my on-topic epiphany. Some movies would make better books. When discussing books and movies, usually people are concerned with whether the film adaptation has been faithful to the book. But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone say a movie, which was not a book first, should be translated into print. But I’m saying it. And I’m giving you a stellar example. M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. This movie showed up in our mailbox the other night (yes, we’re a bit slow on the movie front, two small kids and all that) and I was actually fairly excited. My husband has notoriously bad taste in movies. Let me just give you one example: Dog Soldiers. Dog Soldiers, with the tagline: "Six soldiers. Full moon. No chance." Dog Soldiers, which features a scene of a man morphing into a dog, but the budget must've already been spent on that tagline, so the camera stays focused on the table while a man falls behind the table and rises back up clearly wearing not much more than a plastic dog mask you could pick up at Walgreens. After weathering Dog Soldiers, you can imagine my excitement when I opened the DVD sleeve and saw The Happening. I wouldn't say I'm a die-hard M. Night Shyamalan fan, but I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, loved Signs, and was one of few who couldn’t stop talking about the larger social message in The Village (nature or nurture in the extreme). Lady in the Water was terrible, but not Dog Soldiers terrible, so I figured the odds were on my side with The Happening. So, we watched, and I found the idea fascinating. People suddenly become confused and take their own lives in what is first considered a terrorist attack but is soon understood to be something environmental and unexplainable. In the midst of this crisis, a young married couple (an adequate Marky Mark and flat-as-pancake Zooey Deschanel), facing an unidentified marital calamity of their own, must save their lives while making sense of both their external and internal worlds. The personal parallels the world at large. The almost imperceptible change in their relationship is but a microcosm of the larger environmental change. Like I said, great idea. But I didn’t buy it. It’s as if M. had this brilliant idea and then just started shooting without working out the backstory. I know I was supposed to understand the couple’s angst and disconnect, but I had a hard time caring because the characters weren't developed. And the big secret regarding what was causing the suicides was resolved too quickly. Everything was a bit too tidy and shallow. But imagine if, instead of creating a storyboard, M. had opened a Word document and written a short story - a story exploring the impact we have on our environment, both personal and at large. A story that could, through the written word, navigate both the nuances of the protagonists’ relationship and the history of our impact on the planet. The movie wasn’t much of anything. But the story was brilliant. I think it just needed the right medium.