As long as film has existed as an artistic medium, the written word has turned into visual spectacle. The first science-fiction film ever made, George Melies’ “A Trip to the Moon” (1902), was a loose adaptation of two Jules Verne novels. Since then, we’ve seen countless books and plays transferred from the page to the screen, fulfilling readers’ desires to see the stories they read come to life. For decades, the same debate has raged over these adaptations: To what extent can they be faithful to the originals? Should they be faithful to the originals? And can an adaptation not only match up to, but transcend the quality of the original?

While literature is a written medium, film is an audio-visual one, and often, what can be portrayed in one cannot as easily or as convincingly be portrayed in the other. It’s in this transition from the literary form

to the cinematic that most adaptations struggle, and it must be acknowledged that some works are more difficult than others to bring to the screen. For example, novels like Virginia Woolf ’s “To the Lighthouse,” which is centered on a family’s visits to an island in Scotland in the 1900s, would make difficult adaptations, as they are set more so in the psyche of their characters than any physical setting.

Words can depict things that images can’t, but they can also more easily obscure a reality than film can. When a book deals with a reality that is kept hidden or sugar-coated in its description, visually depicting it can often either ruin the mystery or rob the reader of the veil casted over what is depicted. A prime example is Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” In the novel, it is clear that all we read has been filtered through the romantic and charismatic writing of protagonist Humbert Humbert, and the reader has to read between the lines to picture the reality (an underage girl kidnapped and preyed upon) that Humbert sells to the reader. With film adaptations, however, this kind of sugarcoating is harder, because we are able to see what is happening. Kubrick, however, found his own way around this by using a similar strategy in the visual medium: filming, scoring, and writing the movie as if it were a romance, rather than the story of a pedophile. For instance, the film is shot with the glossy diffused lighting most romances and comedies would use on their leading actresses, and the film’s music is built around a catchy pop tune rather than any suggestion of suspense or unease.

This brings us to the question: In cases where a story can be easily adapted, should a film be faithful to the original? When is it appropriate to take creative liberties? With some stories, sticking close to the books can be an asset: the Harry Potter films did so, and received critical acclaim, as did Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather.” Other books, however, are less suitable for close adaptations to the screen, either because of lack of action or public interest (the film adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s “The Bookshop” has this problem). Many successful film adaptations take liberties, sometimes altering the entire core of the source material, and in some cases it is these films that transcend the originals. The French auteur Jean-Luc Godard would often take a story and strip it down to its barest skeleton of a plot, upon which he would add his own ideas, philosophical tangents, and experimentations (his 1965 film “Pierrot le Fou” retains only the idea of a man and woman running away together and betraying each other from the novel on which it is based). Most adaptations don’t go as far as Godard, but in the hands of a skilled director, a novel’s plot is often refashioned to fit the screen better: Steven Spielberg’s adaptations of “Jaws” and “Jurassic Park” are better known than the original novels (which many, indeed, are unaware of) because he knew how to refashion their plots into blockbusters without losing the thematic and emotional core of each story. In “Jurassic Park,” for example, character deaths are removed in the adaptation, and the ordering of scenes is changed to better fit the progression of an action-adventure movie.

The decision to faithfully adapt a book or take creative liberties rests on the filmmakers’ discretion, and the success of an adaptation depends on their ability to capture the essence of the story in the new medium. Some books may be better suited for the screen than others, and some may require a different approach to achieve a successful adaptation. As long as the core of the story remains intact, filmmakers have the freedom to explore new possibilities and create something that stands on its own as a cinematic work of art. Ultimately, whether an adaptation transcends the original or falls short of expectations is up to the audience to decide, but what remains clear is that the act of adapting literature into film continues to be a fascinating and complex process that challenges artists to find new ways to bring stories to life.