During the enforced downtime during my bout with illness a couple of weeks ago, I actually watched one of the dvd’s I checked out from the bookmobile.

Rob and I were watching quite a few flicks over the colder months thanks to our public library, but warmer weather equals much daylight up here and so we aren’t as inclined to while away hours simply watching. As a result, we are still checking out dvd’s that catch our fancy but often returning them unwatched.

I happened to run across an adaption of Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club and since I was too tired, light-headed and otherwise shitty feeling to even write a blog post (that is as low as it gets for me) I decided to watch it.

And let’s just generously say that hours of my life are just gone forever now.

The frustrating thing about books that become Hollywood movies is that more often than not the entire book is seen as merely a guideline for film rather than the basis for the movie’s existence. Throughout my viewing I was acutely aware that I was being shortchanged. Characters appeared and vanished. Main characters behaved in ways that the other characters seemed to understand without question but left me with nothing but questions.

My main question was this: what was the real version of this story. I knew there had to be a better one. One that was rich and full of real detail.

So, as I often do in these situations, I sought out the book.

Did the page and paper thing.

Actually read.

Reading just the prologue – not even five full pages – I realized that the film was even less a guideline than I had suspected. Four and a quarter pages of the author’s original intent told me the following:

• the character’s ages had been altered in favor of younger people. Everyone was at least 5 to a dozen years older in the book. I guess a novel can have women of a “certain age” but the big screen mustn’t show women over 50 if they can help it (and then they must be “quirky” because that will explain the “old looking thing”.)
• it was supposed to be told from just a single character’s perspective and that the filmmaker had dropped the idea to avoid voice over – I’m guessing – but a narrator certainly would have helped the movie because it jumped all over without much explanation save the passing of the months.
• although the author had the women “typed” ie: flamboyant woman of a certain age, best friend, perfect friend, younger woman friend in need of mentoring, Lesbian, the simple paragraphish introductions seemed more flexible and fluid than their rigid and wooden screen counterparts. I credit the imagination. The mind is a far better screen.
• I knew the book was going to be way better.

I hate film versions of novels by and large even if I haven’t read the book first because it is often so obvious that the story was diluted to make it “fit” the screen and running time.

When I was a kid I loved movies. Almost as much as I loved books. But anymore I find them slow and easy to out-think and insulting. The last because the filmmaker doesn’t view my time as valuable or my attention worth working for. Better to try and dazzle me with visuals and distract me with soundtracks.

My question for you is book or movie?