Courtesy of Creative Commons

October 22, 2024

The Art of Adaptation as Seen in Two Autumnal Films

Print More

As the year progresses further in autumn and summer fades into the distance, I find myself reflecting on the media I’ve consumed during this seasonal transition. Two pieces that I find myself returning back to are Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, both of which I read for the first time in recent months, although I initially watched their movie adaptations years ago. They are both critically acclaimed novels, focused on sets of sisters, possessing at least somewhat autumnal atmospheres, and adapted around the turn of the century by two burgeoning directors who later found great success. So what makes Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (2005) click for me, and Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999) disappoint?

Considering this question means entering into the contentious debate about what a movie adaptation should aim to do. Many book loyalists will wince at every line changed, scene cut, setting altered, etc. I would tell these people that if they would like to read the book, they should just go read the book (you can’t get mad at me! I am an English major!). A movie adaptation will never be a 1:1 copy of a novel. On the practical level, there is a reason it usually takes a lot longer than three hours to read a book, and it’s usually because a lot more stuff happens. On the artistic level, asking a director to create a precise copy of a book is asking them to replicate someone else’s creative vision, and I can’t imagine that that would ever produce interesting art. To some degree, replication is their task, but the best adaptations are colored by that director’s own meaningful interpretation, although it is most painful to disagree with the interpretation at hand. 

This is my issue with Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, and it is difficult to parse what Coppola’s interpretation of the novel even is. The Virgin Suicides takes place in the 1970s Michigan suburbs, and follows the older four daughters of the Lisbon family through the aftermath of their youngest sister’s suicide, told from the limited perspective of a neighborhood boy who was obsessed with the dreamy Lisbon sisters. Eugenides isn’t particularly subtle in expressing themes of grief’s severe impact, disillusion with the nuclear family and the frustrating inexplicability of suicide. While Coppola is decently accurate in including the novel’s most important events, she fails to portray its heart. Eugenides offers his reader a look into a disgusting, decaying town, which reads like a dark fairytale, sometimes dipping a toe into the absurd. The movie features a star-making performance from a young Kirsten Dunst, and the film’s character-driven moments really shine.  However, this isn’t a character-driven book. Coppola doesn’t translate Eugenides’ strong tone into the movie’s visuals, and she fails to explicate his most important themes. Eugenides’ intricacies in perspective and tragedy make for a generational novel, and while Coppola’s adaptation is a good movie, it pales in comparison. It may seem that I’m siding with the book loyalists, but Coppola’s faithfulness to the novel’s key events still cannot give this adaptation any more merit than it has.

Now we turn to Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice, an adaptation I do like. Pride and Prejudice follows Elizabeth Bennet, a young woman resistant to marriage, as she falls in love with Mr. Darcy, an acquaintance she once loathed. The 2005 movie occupies an interesting place in popular culture because while it now has a cult following, public opinion was once much more mixed. Seeing as the movie did quite well at the box office and on the awards circuit, it was far from a flop. However, many Austen fans shunned it because Wright took some liberties in time period, costuming, language and events (it may sound like an egregious departure! It’s not). The movie’s iconic finale, where Darcy and Elizabeth share a romantic kiss, was actually not included in the original UK release due to backlash from early screening audiences. Former Jane Austen Society of North America president Elsa Solender complained that the kiss “has nothing at all of Jane Austen in it” and that it “insults the audience with its banality, and ought to be cut before release.” I would agree that the kiss is not very Austen-like, yet I still enjoy it, and the movie as a whole, even with all of its departures. Why? 

Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a love story, but it also has much to say in the realm of social commentary. While Wright touches on the latter ideas, he is smart in knowing that the romance translates better, and he focuses on it. I understand why a reader may find it a disservice to Austen to simplify her writing, but I can’t imagine how one would represent her narrator’s sharp and quick insights in a visual medium with much finesse. In comparison to TVS, where Coppola failed to portray Eugenides’ vivid picture, Wright did not have much to live up to, as Austen wasn’t interested in inundating her reader with imagery. Ergo, Wright’s visual interpretation certainly suffices for all but the most scrupulous history buffs. Most importantly, Wright nails the characters from what is a more character-driven source material.

Wright plays to the strengths of cinema. Where Coppola is faithful to the chronology, Wright is faithful to the essence, and one is ultimately more important than the other. Coppola, an amateur at the time, may have felt overly concerned with projecting the novel onto the screen, and I’d be curious to see what she might do differently if she were to adapt the novel now. All this is to say, not all adaptations are created equal, but it’s time to stop judging an adaptation by its accuracy to the novel. As a book lover, it’s time to let movie adaptations be exactly what they are: movies!

Chloe Asack is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected].