What's your favorite book to movie adaptation? Was it true to the original?

The road. Cormac McCarthy

I would like to add, for interest's sake: SOLARIS.
NOT the Clooney version, that was far from Accurate.

You need to get your hands on the original Russian one.
I can't speak personally: as I was not thrilled with the one Clooney was in
and I did not watch the Russian movie.

OK, SO I HAD TO HUNT FOR DATA, AND YOU Mr. DanielChristensen
MAY APPRECIATE THIS, PERHAPS, YOU'VE EVEN READ THE NOVEL.
You are clearly a bibliophile and that's one of the most amazing and cool things to BE 😀!

Beaux rêves à tous :) 🌝🌛

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[image][b]3.5 RATING.[/b]



[image][b]4.5 RATING.[/b]

[b]By Laurence Station[/b]

Released 30 years apart, the two films based on Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel Solaris, revolve around the future discovery of a world covered by a presumably sentient ocean, and the subsequent study of the planet by a low-orbiting research station. The inability of the scientists, or Solarists, to make human-identifiable contact with the ocean has fomented a growing attitude that the project should be scrapped, and scientist/psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to Solaris to assess the well-being of the three remaining Solarists and make a recommendation on the continued viability of the base.

What he finds is disturbing. One of the three scientists is dead -- an apparent suicide -- and the other two are reluctant to offer any insight into what's transpiring on the station. But Kelvin soon understands the scientists' reticence when he's visited by his wife, Hari (Rheya in the English-from-French translation of the novel, as well as in the most recent film adaptation) -- a remarkable feat given that Hari committed suicide ten years earlier. This mysterious appearance, coupled with similar visitations among the other scientists, draws Kelvin deeper into the powerful influence the living ocean seems to be exerting on the station. Does the physical conjuring of suppressed memories in one's unconscious -- buried desire, guilt or fear -- serve as the ocean's way of communicating with humans? Is it simply tormenting or testing the Solarists? Is it not even aware of the effect that its replication of thoughts is causing? Is it just one of the planet's natural phenomena, akin to geologic or meteorological disturbances?

Lem's novel intentionally left many of these questions unanswered, citing the Latin phrase "Ignoramus et ignorabimus" ("We do not know and we will never know"). For Lem, the presumption of humanity that the universe must fall in line with a distinctly humanocentric viewpoint (as witnessed by our anthropomorphizing of deities) is ludicrous. In his view, humanity is just a speck of dust against an unfathomably large and ultimately unknowable backdrop.

Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 adaptation reworks and fleshes out much of Lem's narrative structure, and eventually takes its own slant. For Tarkovsky, Solaris, the planet, isn't nearly as interesting as Earth, which the novel never visits. But Tarkovsky sets the film's first act here, and it's obvious where his sympathies lie. Solaris is a distant, emotionally detached world that only serves to remind Kelvin just how much he misses his homeworld. Tarkovsky uses Solaris as a dramatic contrast to meditate on the beauty of the natural world, the bucolic, pre-World War II Russia of his childhood. Where Lem ended Solaris on a cynical note -- with Kelvin pining for Hari's return, a prisoner of Solaris' mystery and power to fashion nearly perfect replicas of remembered or long-buried thoughts -- Tarkovsky offers more closure, with a memorable closing image that offers Kelvin absolution, even at the cost of forsaking the Earth he loves.

American director Steven Soderbergh, however, approaches Solaris from a completely different direction. Whereas Lem used Solaris as a staging ground for asking deeply philosophical questions about our place in the grand scheme of things, and Tarkovsky expanded and deviated from Lem's ideas by inserting more personal concerns into the story, Soderbergh boils Solaris down to one central conceit: Love is stronger than death. Lem touched on this notion, but debunked it as useless romanticizing, yet another example of humans trying to impose their will on immutable universal law. For Soderbergh, however, love can triumph over death, as it has in recent films like Ghost and Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. Soderbergh also understands basic economics: will audiences really go for a brooding mediation on time, memory and intransigent contact with a living ocean, or would they prefer to see George Clooney (playing Dr. Chris Kelvin in the update) and the striking Natascha McElhone (as Rheya) falling in love and getting naked?

Soderbergh uses a grim Dylan Thomas couplet -- "Though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion" -- throughout his Solaris, and the director believes every word of it. Unlike Lem's novel or Tarkovsky's earlier adaptation, Soderbergh's Solaris shows us the couple's courtship, marriage and turbulence, as well as Rheya's ultimate suicide. When Kelvin encounters her years later on Solaris Station, his love for her hasn't diminished; if anything it's only grown stronger. This theme, the triumph of love over death, is well executed. Clooney does a good job of revealing a man obsessed with making the most of his unexpected second chance with Rheya. But Soderbergh's "love conquers all" message comes at the expense of the source material's most intriguing element: the planet Solaris itself. In the book, as in Tarkovsky's film, the living ocean was a constant presence throughout, something discussed, debated, omnipresent; essentially a character in its own right. But Soderbergh has no use for it, other than as a metaphor for the power of Love. For him, Solaris is merely a higher plane of existence, where Kelvin and Rheya can spend eternity together without all the meddlesome baggage that comes with living together on Earth.

Although he's fashioned a solid film about the issue of transcendent love, Soderbergh's work is only tangentially related to Solaris; it's a markedly streamlined adaptation, the more profound elements of the preceding film and novel so reduced as to call into question any connection at all with the original idea. Tarkovsky grafted his own personal worldview onto Lem's vision, but still paid great respect to the novel. The only respect given to Lem with the updated version is the fee paid for use of the name. Tarkovsky's Solaris is far and way the deeper and richer (although admittedly more taxing) of the two films. Soderbergh's is the better date flick -- but, honestly, you'd be just as well off renting Ghost instead.



http://www.shakingthrough.net/movies/reviews/2002/solaris_1972_and_solaris_2002.htm

Stephen King book IT not a big bookworm or movie watcher but can't wait for that remake to come out I think next week.

50 Shades Of Grey. Horrible horrible movie, but even worse book.

the first shining from kubrick. it was very far from the book and improved in many ways.

The Last Picture Show (1972). A great novel and a great movie, very true to the original.

Tom Clancy, Sum of all fears was well done.. Clancy had artistic control..
I think the lord of the rings movie series was awful!

of course I'm very critical, considering that I've read it dozens of times..

Aren't there seven Dark Tower books? How is it possible to make a faithful adaptation?
edit: I second The Road though.

The Stand!! by Stephen king!
THAT was a great movie adaptation!

I think The Green Mile was, also Delores Clayborne, don't know if I spelled that right. I love Stephen King. ⭐

Day of the Jackal.
The original, not the crappy remake.

Did't like the way they portrayed Gimli in the movies. Especially the Dwarf tossing side gag when they were at the gates of Helms Deep. They did capture the quintessential relationship between Sam and Frodo very well.

I try to see them separately as they're two entirely different forms. But I think The Grapes of Wrath stands up a a really good representation of the book given when it was made.

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. The book was incredible, and the movie, despite not including everything that was in the book, was a very good watch.

Jane Eyre, my favorite book of all time and the many movies that have been made have been pretty close to the book.

The jewel in the crown,it was one of the best adaptation I saw. Another was "in cold blood" by Truman Capote.

Lord of the Rings. I saw The Dark Tower and it was the worst book adaptation I ever saw

Lord of the Rings is an excellent example, btw.. So well done indeed.

You have got my reply :D 👏🏼🥂 !

I loved the way Peter Jackson brought LOTR to life, too. My father gave me the set of books when I was nine. In a sense I returned the favor by giving [b]him[/b] the DVD set. 😊

My favorite was the first adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Lathe of Heaven". An amazing book and movie. The storyline is so compelling that even the later adaptation is entertaining. But the first is truest to the book.