betsy hearne

holy cow i went to class last night and we walked to a guest speaker, betsy hearne, who was very thought provoking. i haven't been this shaken in a while about things i haven't considered much at all.

her topic was... "and now, the major motion picture: books to film" or something like that.

she talked about more than the obvious difference when books are translated to film as a loss - she didn't seem to think it was a bad idea to translate. she said the best book to film she could think of is curious george, and her main concern was 'time and space' for thought.

in books, she said, there's as much time as is needed or wanted for thinking, creating, imagining... whereas in movies, there is hardly any quiet time for reflection. obviously you could stop the film and come back to it later if you wanted to, but her point was that the creators of movies have increased the chase-action-explosion in films, where these things were either non-existent in the book or much smaller in scale.

the main quote i can remember, because it is simple but powerful: "it's like moviemakers don't trust storytellers to tell a good story" (without adding their own flare to spice it up)...

i can't say i'm as concerned about this as betsy, but maybe that's cuz i was raised on this new smash'm up media. i agree with her, and i've been grateful for movies that come out with a message and without so much crazy action - garden state comes to mind, and the good girl. and donnie darko.

she bashed movies like harry potter and lotr, and she had a certain distaste for charlie and the chocolate factory, which i liked a lot. she called attention to the 'sacrifice' of aslan in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. her objection to this sacrifice, which is supposed to parallel jesus' sacrifice on the cross, was that the filmmakers converted it to a pagan ritual and had all kinds of violence and action, where it should have been quiet and solemn, and that it misrepresents paganism. my argument for this, which i wish i'd thought of last night, is that cs lewis created this slam against paganism when he wrote the book and wrote the 'witch' as magical and evil. the filmmakers simply exaggerated this, but not much, i thought.

okay, gotta go to work. i just finished grading papers and had to get this out about betsy hearne, who i respected a lot and mostly agreed, but it made me uneasy, which is also good. i felt like i was being pushed out of my comfort zone. that's always good.