Books: Now in the movie aisle

There is something unique about holding a book in your hands, reading each word and imagining each character in your mind. But sometimes films are more impressive than words, or vice versa.

When you read a book, your imagination is doing the work. You picture the characters and the setting in your mind, and sometimes you get disappointed when a movie adaptation doesn’t match your vision. Movies are always working against your imagination.

Over the years, many great books have been made into movies with notable successes and failures.

Just a few weeks ago, Philippa Gregory’s brilliant story of The Other Boleyn Girl was made into a film with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman. But the movie only shows about one-fourth of the beauty that emanates from Gregory’s words.

However, some movies do portray story lines more effectively than the books. For instance, the movie The Notebook shows the love so passionately between the two main characters, Allie and Noah, while the book by Nicholas Sparks falls a little short. It is not the fault of the author, but this is merely a story that brings deeper meaning when the audience sees the way Noah looks at Allie, the way she smiles back at him. Or perhaps the movie was better simply because of the great performances by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.

And then there is the famous series of books and movies that star the boy who lived—Harry Potter. We all read the books first, and fell in love with turning the next page, and crying when we reached the last. When there was talk of movies being made, everyone who read the books was a little concerned that the magic of the words would be taken away. Also, due to the length of the books, the movies would have to take certain pieces of the plot out. Nevertheless, the Harry Potter movies kept improving, and by the fifth movie, Daniel Radcliffe has succeeded in transferring the magic of Harry Potter from the pages of the book into the film.

While the screenwriters of Harry Potter stayed true to J.K. Rowling’s storyline, some books are not so lucky. For instance, the Princess Diaries movies do not follow the plotline of the books, by Meg Cabot, at all. The first movie stayed pretty true, but for the second movie, the screenwriters obviously decided to stray from the original story when they skipped five years and made Princess Mia have to find a husband.

Sometimes reading the book and watching the movie is a completely different experience, and equally great. For example, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and the movie with Gregory Peck are equally powerful in their message. In this case, reading the words and seeing the picture brings new and different feelings and thoughts while expressing the same ideas.

In the end, different people have different experiences. Some people get more out of holding a book in their hands and turning each page, while others get more out of seeing each scene with their eyes. Imagination or no, books and movies are unique pieces of art.

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