Where would the film industry be without books? And how many screenwriters manage to do justice to the ones they adapt? Tough task, I know, and that’s why I tend to avoid movies based on favourite books – never seen The Kite Runner, for instance. Although it can work the other way – I didn’t read The English Patient for years, put off by the film, but when I finally got around to it I found it to be much, much better then the movie. Some adaptations are extraordinarily good, though. Looking for something to watch this weekend, I dug out a DVD of Sally Potter’s 1992 Orlando, a freebie in the days when newspapers were using them to get our attention.
I’m not a Virginia Woolf fan although I have read and enjoyed the book, a feminist classic and a love letter to Vita Sackville-West according to her son. The eponymous protagonist begins as a young nobleman in Elizabethan England and ends as a young woman three centuries later in 1928, the year the vote was finally extended to all British women over twenty-one, although the movie takes her up to the 1990s.
This was my fourth viewing of the film and it still transported me. It’s a sumptuous production full of gorgeous tableaux and archly comic eccentricity – the late Quentin Crisp as a raddled Elizabeth I surrounded by simpering sycophants, Jimmy Somerville’s round-faced golden-robed angel, suspended in the sky over Orlando singing in his trademark falsetto. Tilda Swinton is a fabulous Orlando, charmingly gauche and suitably androgynous, seamlessly changing gender after a century or so. Sally Potter conjured up sets of breathtaking beauty and all, apparently, for a song – I heard somewhere that the whole film cost as much to make as a dinosaur’s sneeze in the contemporaneous blockbuster, Jurassic Park. Probably apocryphal but it’s a great story. For my money, it more than did justice to the book and I’m sure I’ll be giving it a fifth airing. How do you feel about books based on films? Are there any that worked well for you?
I haven’t seen Orlando but will definitely have to get hold of a copy now! Invariably I find films don’t measure up to the book – in fact I can’t think of a single example of a film being ‘as good’ or ‘better’ than the book. And like you, I’ve avoided watching The Kite Runner because I enjoyed the book so much!
You’re in for a treat with Orlando. There are two other films that I can think of: Lore, based on Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room and The Turn of the Screw but I think that’s because I don’t get on very well with Henry James.
I didn’t know about Orlando before the movie came out. I haven’t watched the movie but I finally read the book last year and loved it. I want to watch the movie because of Tilda – she’s perfectly cast for that part.
I’ve liked the LOTR movies (not The Hobbit) and The Shining. I also like the BBC tv series of Pride & Prejudice with Colin Firth. I was really disappointed in The Golden Compas – you couldn’t understand that movie if you hasn’t read the book first…
One of the worst things about a disappointing adaptation is that you’re stuck with someone else’s images in your head, I think. I hope you manage to track down an Orlando DVD, Christina. You’re right, Tilda Swinton was the perfect choice.
Ooo I read this v recently as part of my Woolf course . I MUST get hold of a copy of the film.
It’s an absolute treat, Helen. Gorgeous backdrops and Tilda Swinton is a superb Orlando.
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