This last week in class, we watched the Oleanna film adaptation, and I'll be the first to say that I loved it. To be quite frank, I really hated the play. I found that the weird pacing and the constant interruptions bugged me, and that I couldn't get the tone from the text. I did enjoy some of the themes, but the fact that it was all dialogue made it too hard to visualise in my mind.
This all changed when I watched the film. Firstly, I think that the two actors played the characters of John and Carol really well. William H. Macy, the man who played John, is a personal favourite of mine (he's played parts in some of my favourite films) and while it scared me the role that he played in this, I think he did a fantastic job in portraying John. I believe that the actress that played Carol did a phenomenal job of portraying Carol, even if she did make me hate her, even more.
The fact that this was a film helped to change the fact that I couldn't visualise anything. By having the room shown to me, I was able to build a spacial dynamic between the characters, something that the play gave me no opportunity to do. The same worked for me, in the change of the clothes, and the way that Carol stood, which helped me identify the power shift a lot more easily. The disheveled appearance of John as the play moves on also helped with this.
However, the biggest shift from the play was with pacing. Having the two people actually saying the lines, and making it seem like a real conversation, instead of just voices in my head, made the dialogue flow in a much more effective way, and I really enjoyed it, this time around.
One of my classmates, Gautam, says in his blog, that the end of the film is a failure, because it slightly changes the ending of the play. I could not disagree with him more. The play and the film are not supposed to be direct adaptations. The role of the film, and the play, is to appear to the audience as something interesting to watch, not to translate 100%. By changing the end slightly, they have insured that the audience will think about the ending a lot more, because it creates a more open ending.You can read Gautam's entry here. Gautam's Blog
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I enjoyed the film a lot more than I did the play, because it made sense to me in the film medium.
This all changed when I watched the film. Firstly, I think that the two actors played the characters of John and Carol really well. William H. Macy, the man who played John, is a personal favourite of mine (he's played parts in some of my favourite films) and while it scared me the role that he played in this, I think he did a fantastic job in portraying John. I believe that the actress that played Carol did a phenomenal job of portraying Carol, even if she did make me hate her, even more.
The fact that this was a film helped to change the fact that I couldn't visualise anything. By having the room shown to me, I was able to build a spacial dynamic between the characters, something that the play gave me no opportunity to do. The same worked for me, in the change of the clothes, and the way that Carol stood, which helped me identify the power shift a lot more easily. The disheveled appearance of John as the play moves on also helped with this.
However, the biggest shift from the play was with pacing. Having the two people actually saying the lines, and making it seem like a real conversation, instead of just voices in my head, made the dialogue flow in a much more effective way, and I really enjoyed it, this time around.
One of my classmates, Gautam, says in his blog, that the end of the film is a failure, because it slightly changes the ending of the play. I could not disagree with him more. The play and the film are not supposed to be direct adaptations. The role of the film, and the play, is to appear to the audience as something interesting to watch, not to translate 100%. By changing the end slightly, they have insured that the audience will think about the ending a lot more, because it creates a more open ending.You can read Gautam's entry here. Gautam's Blog
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I enjoyed the film a lot more than I did the play, because it made sense to me in the film medium.
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