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ewashburn's picture

The Filmmaker's Interpretation

 I wonder whether you want to read the book instead of see the movie because you want to form your own impressions of the book before witnessing someone else's. As I wrote about in my paper, when we see film adaptations of novels or comics, what we are seeing is the filmmaker's interpretation of the material. Instead of forming our own conclusions from the abstract characters, and instead of pursuing what we find interesting thematically as we read, we as viewers are barraged by the visual, and are forced into seeing how the director views the material. Instead of forming our own conclusions about the source material, we instead have to form conclusions based on someone else's interpretation. It seems to me that, in that sense, film adaptations are forms of "the new novel" only as long as we allow ourselves to view the interaction between the works and accept that what we see has already been through the wringer of interpretation. 

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