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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 479866" data-attributes="member: 3887">Pardon me, this is a hijack...Wow. No. A million times no... a number of no's equal to the amount in lira of the US national debt.Doc, I can almost agree with you if you're using a very narrow definition of storytelling. There's no denying the immediacy and visceral power of film. Trying to commit to film what authors can --without much controversy-- commit to the page would get the filmaker committed to an asylum or a jail. Film removes a layer of abstraction and neccessary interpretation: its can scare in the way actual experience scares {though its nowhere near as mimetic as some might claim}.But there's a lot more going on in some novels than that kind of visceral storytelling. Its a question of information density and mechanics. The static nature of the reading experience allows for as slow a pace as needed, one can reflect, look back, stop and start; it allows structures too complex for any performed media. In a film, play, opera, etc, you have four hours, tops {well, some exceptions} to fully realize your work. There's a limit to what you can fit in there. Consider some dense, hefty books that require a month/s to read, often with professional guides {Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses}. A perfomed work couldn't bear that load. Saying you won't find more in books than in film is like saying you won't find more in the Pacific Ocean than you will in a bottle of Evian {of course, when I go hiking, I hate to carry around the whole of an ocean...}Films do some things better, but novels do things film cannot. Period.And, on the subject of translation{form Blazing Critical Soapbox!} in a very real theoretical sense,  all communication/art requires acts of translation. Meaning in art is always created in an act of translation between the work and the viewer, whether you're talking films, books, interpetive dances, or weird stuff with done with yams.... Just because movies tend to look more like the view out of your own head, more than words on the page, anyway, that doesn't mean your seeing {or rather, finding signifigant} what the author intended to convey. There's always translation involved. {put away Blazing Critical Soapbox and break back up into black-clad, beret wearing robot lions}.I'm not doing a good job hear... maybe from home...</blockquote>

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