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Christopher Farai Charamba The Reader
Have you ever watched a movie adapted from a book and thought to yourself, “Well that’s not what it is supposed to be like”? The director and producers of the film completely botched the image that you had in your head of the characters and the setting. I find myself in this space quite often. Generally, when I hear a film is based on a book, I prefer to read the book before I go out and watch the film, regardless of how raving the reviews of the motion picture might be. The reason for this is that reading opens up the imagination, it allows one the opportunity to visualise the words and paint their own picture in the mind’s eye. This is one of the great pleasures of reading, taking someone else’s words and creating a whole new reality within the confines of one’s head.

Reading thus becomes an escape, a place where people can discover new places, people and positions. One is not limited or stalled from to creating whatever corresponding image they perceive that corresponds with the words on the page.

I would imagine that this pleasure of filling the mind’s eye with a kaleidoscope of scenes from words is what fuels a number of avid readers. They become directors and producers of their own cerebral movies as they flip through the pages of the book.

Unfortunately, more often than not when the book is eventually adapted into a movie it does not live up to the expectation of the reader. The script is often not the same, there are scenes which are changed and important scenes which are left out.

This can be infuriating especially when you have thoroughly enjoyed the book and had a solid vision of how the film should be.

I recently finished reading “Beasts of No Nation” by Nigerian-American author Uzodinma Iweala. The story is of a child who survives the razing down of his village town by rebels in an unnamed war- torn West African country only to be kidnapped and turned into a child soldier by the same rebels.

Agu tells in the first person his experiences with the rebels under the leadership of “Commandant” as they travel from town to town, killing, raping and pillaging. He speaks of the abuse that he and some of the other child soldiers experience as part of this troop. He recalls some of his experiences before this catastrophe that has befallen him, reliving the happier days and how he eventually ended up in this situation.

The book was extremely harrowing as it depicted the horrors of war through the eyes of a child. Iweala is able to vividly show how Agu’s innocence is stolen and violated in a number of different ways as he is subjected to a life of crude violence.

I first heard of “Beasts of No Nation” on social media as it had garnered a lot of interest through the Netflix film adaptation of the book. The film stars Idris Elba as “Commandant” and he won a Screen Actors Guild award for the role.

Soon after I got my hands on the film, I found out that it was based on a book and so I waited to watch it until I had read the book. Once I had been through all the pages I pressed play on the critically acclaimed film and was left a little disappointed for the same reasons as other book adapted films.

Had I watched the film without reading the book, my thoughts on it would definitely be different. The problem was that parts of the storyline changed and the film didn’t convey the imagery of the book in the manner that I had wanted.

This is the same problem I had with the adapted version of “Half of Yellow Sun”, the novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton. The book was brilliant but the film was a complete yawn fest.

I understand that adapting a book to film involves a number of complex procedures -the script, the budget, the vision of the director juxtaposed with that of the author, the production company et al. I also understand that my interpretation will also be different from the next person’s. And sometimes they do get it right. The film adaptation of “The Fault in Our Stars” ranks as a one of my favourites so too “The Help” starring Viola Davis adapted from the novel by Kathryn Stockett. In both the directors captured the essence of the novels both in storytelling and imagery.

My qualm, however, is that one is more likely to find a poorly done film adapted from a book than they would find a good one.

Perhaps I the reader am being unnecessarily fastidious, one certainly has the option to simply not watch the films. However, one would prefer if more authors would take the Paulo Coelho approach and refuse to have their works adapted to film.

In the age of multimillion-dollar blockbusters that is unlikely to happen, but it would save a lot of books from being ruined by the silver screen.