Adapting the Past Adapting

ADAPTING THE PAST Brian McFarlane ISSUE 46 SCREEN EDUCATION 18 SONGS OF EXPERIENCE What film adaptation – and the word should warn us of this – is not and cannot be about is providing us with the same experience as that offered by the ADAPTING THE PAST earlier text. Brian McFarlane HE most expensive ‘book’ the other two in support of my case that lating it to another semiotic system, one that I have bought in liv- there is no avoiding the phenomenon in of audio-visual moving images will enjoin ing memory is Frank Mill- the cinema, and why would one try? Fur- on the new work all manner of ‘change’, er’s graphic novel, 300.1 ther, each of the four titles draws on a ‘alteration’ and ‘accommodation’. (In the (Now that I’m finished with different kind of anterior text, and each case of Becoming Jane, it is not even a it, I’m open to offers for in its way derives from a kind of ‘history’: matter of adapting a precursor ‘text’ – Tan almost new hardback.). By chance, it that is, from a set of circumstances that unless one counts Austen’s letters as a cost almost the same as the ticket I had had their referents in the ‘real’ worlds text – but of re-imagining a possible in- for the MTC’s production of Alan Ben- of the past, whether of early nineteenth terlude in the life of the great novelist. It nett’s The History Boys. The profound century England or of upcountry Victoria seems widely accepted that Jane Austen point made here is that if you take ad- or an English grammar-school education did engage in at least a mild flirtation aptation seriously, it can be a very ex- in the mid-twentieth century or of a battle with the impecunious young Irishman, pensive business. As this is endemically in the ancient world. Tom Lefroy, but the degree of her emo- practised in contemporary cinema – real- tional involvement has divided commen- ly, in cinema since the olden days – one The ubiquitous nature of cinematic ad- tators.3 There is actually a scholarly book can hardly avoid it, and only be grateful aptation keeps leading one to ask ques- entitled Becoming Jane Austen, but its when, as in the case of Romulus, My Fa- tions about what it means to us as view- author is not credited on the film, though ISSUE 46 ther, the original memoir2 could be bor- ers. In the most general sense, the word it details Austen’s supposed feeling for 4 rowed from a library and, in that of Be- ‘adaptation’ implies ‘change’, ‘alteration’, Lefroy.) What film adaptation – and the SCREEN EDUCATION coming Jane, if you’d read the Austen ‘accommodation’; in relation to cinema, it word should warn us of this – is not and oeuvre, you didn’t need to read further. usually refers to the taking of work con- cannot be about is providing us with the ceived in one medium (novel, play, mem- same experience as that offered by the This study is essentially based on how oir, biography, poem, TV series and so earlier text. There may perhaps be some the Miller and Bennett texts have fared on) and reconceptualizing it in terms of overlap in this matter, perhaps even what in transfer to the screen, but I mention cinema. The mere – mere! – act of trans- Gerard Genette would call a ‘palimps- 19 SONGS OF EXPERIENCE est’ effect. In his discussion he coins the 300 is only the most recent adaptation words hypertext and hypotext to char- from this source. Miller’s previous brush acterize the ‘relationship uniting a text B with the screen was on Sin City (2005), (which I shall call the hypertext) to an ear- known in the US (and on DVD) as Frank lier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hy- Miller’s Sin City, which he co-directed potext), upon which it is grafted …’5 The with Robert Rodriguez, and which bears idea of this relationship is for some of us the credit: ‘BASED ON THE SIN CITY endlessly interesting, but – it is almost GRAPHIC NOVELS BY FRANK MILL- wearying to stress – the different media ER’. These bits of information perhaps involved inevitably ensure, at least for the point to Miller’s having the status of attentive reader and viewer, a radical dif- graphic-novel royalty, and on 300 ference in responses to the two or more he is co-executive producer. His versions. are, of course, not the only graphic novels adapted to the screen in the The graphic novel: new last few years, but they are per- challenges in adaptation haps among those most con- cerned to find cinematic paral- So, having braced myself, I bought lels to the visual styles of their and read my first graphic novel, Mill- originals.6 The Wachowski broth- er’s 300, and must say at the outset ers wrote and directed The Matrix that it offers a new challenge, new im- (1999) from their own graphic novel, plications, for students of film adapta- and James McTeigue directed V for tion. It is easy enough to say that, in this Vendetta (2006) from a screenplay by case, it is not just words set out linear- the Wachowskis, ‘Based on the graph- ly on a page that the filmmaker is adapt- ic novel illustrated by David Lloyd’. ing: indeed the words are not set out in The films that bear least visual re- this way but burst out all over the page, semblance to their source works in bubbles and rectangles and ellipses: include Sam Mendes’ Road to as well, though, and more significantly, Perdition (2002), from a graph- the filmmaker now has to contend with ic novel by Max Allan Collins what is already a visualization of the nar- and Richard Piers Rayner, rative action. What, then, is the filmmaker much revised by screen- adapting here? Is he intent on making a writer David Self, and film that will LOOK like the graphic nov- David Cronenberg’s A el? Can he expect the soundtrack to take History of Violence its cue from KUNCH! and KRAK! and the (2005), from like? Will he expect ac- ISSUE 46 tors – on film, two-di- SCREEN EDUCATION mensional representa- tions of actual phys- ical presences – to speak in the large simplicities of the TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: THE HISTORY BOYS, PANEL FROM graphic novel’s FRANK MILLER’S 300, TWO SCENES FROM THE FILM 300. characters? 20 MIDDLE: RICHARD GRIFFITHS AS HECTOR IN THE HISTORY BOYS It is not just words set out linearly on a page that the filmmaker is adapting: indeed the words are not set out in this way but burst out all over the page, in bubbles and rectangles and ellipses: as well, though, and more significantly, the filmmaker now has to contend with what is already a visualization of the the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, and screenplay by John narrative action. Olsen. The cinematographer on Perdition was the great Conrad L. Hall, who won an Oscar for his evocation of Depres- sion-years America, but whose images belong wholly to the screen rather than to Collins and Raynor’s graphics. I have no idea what aficionados make of the screen versions of their favourite graphic fictions. Adapted films in general tend to get rough handling from gently nurtured critics, and it is no doubt easy to be dismissive if one has grown up with Jane Austen, Henry James, Thomas Hardy and that push. Having, as I said, laid out a large sum of money for 300, I had my first sustained encounter with the mode of the graphic novel, or rather my first since childhood obsessions with the Phantom and Superman ‘com- ics’, as one called them then, even when they were of extended length as distinct from strips in journals and newspapers. What, I seriously wondered, is to be had from such reading? Well, to start with there is some real beauty in the art work, in its line and composition and its muted hues; even, on occasion, a look of paint- ing, a comment which, I realize, reeks of the patronage of finding something to praise in terms of an older, more estab- lished art form. There are also moments of sly modern wit (confronted with a bi- zarre and bejewelled figure borne aloft by slaves, Leonidas ventures: ‘Let me ISSUE 46 guess. It’s Xerxes, isn’t it?’) and scep- ticism (‘There’s never been a holy man SCREEN EDUCATION who lacked the love of gold,’ says Leoni- das, as he seeks out the Ephors in their TOP LEFT: DIRECTOR ALISTER GRIERSON; rock-top aerie). And there is no missing ALL OTHER PHOTOS its wildly emphatic narrational mode. In FROM KOKODA case you might, key motifs spill over the (PHOTOS BY JASIN page in sprawling red letters: PERSIANS! BOLAND) 21 SONGS OF EXPERIENCE or NOW as the occasion demands. VICTORY, the last referring not to the im- is his poetry. The way that he structures mediate outcome of this unequal conflict the prose is as important as the drawings As everyone must by now know, 300 (like but to long-term defeat of oppression by to me. I wanted to think of a way to pre- the old 20th Century-Fox film, The 300 those who stand firm for higher ideals. serve and honor his prose, as well as his Spartans, (André DeToth, 1961) which imagery, in the film.9 in fact inspired Miller), is the story of the When one turns to the film, it is hard doomed defence of the pass of Ther- to resist the idea of the graphic novel’s This suggests a level of attachment to mopylae in 480 B.C.

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