Adaptation....lessons in shameless bowdlerization, courtesy Hollywood

What a lovely movie... knowing, sly, crazy, ill-paced and offbeat.

Sorry, folks. This isn't meant to be a eulogy to the odd little film, which itself I deem too oddball for its own good. Indeed, it even has the screenwriter for the protagonist, with an antipode for a brother, or is it the other way? Never mind. On to the subject of this post.

I have never really been the biggest fan of Hollywood adaptations of well-established literary works. It is a blessing that the most successful and appealing films freely and quite adeptly adapt popular fiction and, on the weight of starpower and cinematic wizardry, create more out of nothing. Which is why John Grisham ought to be a screenwriter(really, who even remembers The Firm or The Client on paper?), Stephen King is better remembered for Spacek's telekinetic vengeance in Carrie and the atrocious The Shining( not too many are aware of Shawshank Redemption's King-connection) than for his monstrously weak body of work, and the mediocre nostalgia-piece To Kill a Mockingbird made for an effective and evocative film, even with its racial stridency.

Not all adaptations tread the treacherous path, though. Some worthy adaptations actually achieve the rare feat of eclipsing their inspirations. The oft-quoted example of The Godfather must necessarily be brought up here. More on that presently.

Other notables include The Remains of the Day(the political undertones of the Ishiguro novel, a model of internalisation, are clumsily circumvented, but it is a lovely film, with great performances), Apocalypse Now(the despairing, chaotic tone of Conrad's short story is powerfully captured), The Wizard of Oz(the subtle device of a dream with the familiar standing in for the fantastical, is particularly good), The Age of Innocence(easily Scorsese's masterpiece), Minority Report(a short story, but the film is deeply provoking and original) and some others. I must mention the fantastic adaptation of Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. A gloriously lurid drama, with the largest consignment of vitriol this side of Husbands and Wives. Course, plays are likelier to play better on the big screen, for obvious reasons.

But the fact remains that for every triumph there are a dozen debacles deserving of being relegated to the Hall of Gall.

For starters, the most heralded: Wuthering Heights, A Passage to India, Dracula(never mind Lugosi , where is the mood?), L.A.Confidential(yes, it sucks!, Ellroy's hard-edged prose is replaced by reels and reels of gloss), Great Expectations, Oliver!(Dickens plus sex-and minus Dickens- and saccharine respectively), A Room With a View(snooze...) ..... Perhaps the reason for lacklustre adaptations is the inability to reinterpret material to suit the sentiments and mores of the times. I am reminded of the recent disaster The Scarlet Letter, whose infidelity to the text Demi Moore defended by gushing,"How many have read the book anyway?"

That is about as pitiful as it gets.

Of course, it is a given that books that lend themselves most easily to cinematic interpretation are those with vivid imagery and mundane prose, melodrama and double entendres in place of glorious metaphors and social commentary. The Lord of the Rings translates well from sword-and-sandal page-turner to multi-million dollar franchise. Harry Potter proves that even insanely talentless writing is box-ofice salvation. Sorry Blyton. Looks like two generations make all the difference in pop cultural-hysteria over juvenile trash.

The Godfather is a rare beast indeed. The book is frequently turgid and uninvolving, with sketchy characters and zero charisma. On the other hand, what do I say about the magnetism Brando and Pacino bring to the screen? How do I explain the travesty that is the second book of The Godfather, after the quite taut first? Somehow, all things do gel in the film, and its operatic sweep is undeniable. One for the ages, definitely, despite the dated settings.

Coming to the meat of the post...

The Disney studio has had several monster hits to its credit, all family-friendly Sunday-school tales with cutting edge animation and cunning merchandise-promotion drives. And it is no secret the primary audience is 'the young' and 'young at heart', meaning they are guilty pleasures for just about any adult. The faithfulness of a Disney cartoon to its source is questionable at best, so what is the fuss all about?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Hugo's fierce and passionate allegory is a devastating read. Even as those wild and sweeping emotions come rushing back to me, I am at a loss for superlatives....

It is far from subtle. Hugo's vicious denunciation of the Church, and, in reality, all noble(why, all human) impulses, fashions 3, no 4 monumental characters:

• The eponymous hunchback, a brooding, deformed and demented figure, reviled, ostracized and unloved, malevolent, brutish and bitter, who 'merely acquired the weapon that had been used against him', namely public loathing...
• The free spirit Esmeralda, pure, lovely and naive to the degree of an unshakeable belief in the power of love, even before the vagaries of men. Truly the moral centre of the book, she moves through it like the moon through an inky, starless sky, purifying the firmament with a breath, unheedful of her charms, gay, flighty and irresistible.
• Notre Dame herself, possessed of as many secrets as can the soul harbour, and many more, with its impenetrable sepulchres, piercing angles and forbidding demeanour, an edifice to chastity, and yet pregnant with thoughts evil and dark.
• Claude Frollo, the archdeacon of Josas, deeply conflicted, a model of virtue in quest for knowledge, torn apart by a lust so overwhelming as to render reason void, religion naught, and restraint petty. Equal parts rage, frustration, covetousness, treachery, unexpected tenderness and helplessness, Frollo is truly one of the most tragic of literary figures.

Set in a corrupt and seditious Paris, populated by kings, priests, cutthroats and whores alike, the book pits beauty against apathy, deformity against censure, desire against abstinence and the Church against the people. In its inexorable spiral towards the supremely tragic denouement, it achieves a staggering intensity, and strangely, an almost poetic justice in the destinies of the protagonists. From the heavens of passion does Frollo descend to the depths of depravity, of abject cruelty. From the heavens of joy does Esmeralda plunge to the dregs of despair, even so clinging to her childlike faith. From the heavens of self-absorption does Quasimodo perceive a bliss infinitely rewarding, married to it in the glare of hatred and divorced in the twilight of intolerance. And from the heights of splendour and virginity does Notre Dame get reduced to a spectre, conceived in glory and raped and pillaged in the space of a single night witness to the darkest, basest aspects of man.

There is much more, Hugo's bitter censure of modern architecture and classical teachings, of ignorance and superstition. Ruthless to the very end, the book spares none: the Beast, vanquishing Beauty, finds his moral ground untenable, and falls to his beckoning doom, even as true Love gets kicked in the shin, fear begets animosity and vindictiveness, and vice versa.

Along the journey, we encounter characters such as the dreamy philosopher Pierre Gringoire, whose utility extends to more than just the ornamental, believe me, and the Sachette of Place-Greve, whose tale will break your heart, even at the centre of the whirlwind Hugo kicks up around Frollo and Esmeralda. We behold perversity, sin, carnage, destitution and celebration, sometimes all in the same scene, and ironies abound, stunning, cruel, pitiless ironies(what more so than the Sachette's final stand?).

Comes the proposal of rapine. Disney wishes to adapt the book to make the 'darkest, most adult cartoon yet'. The wordless beast Quasimodo becomes a tragic, misunderstood, garrulous figure, and cuddly as a bear. Frollo becomes the archetypal villain, with no rhyme or reason for his villainy. Esmeralda swings from revolutionary to feminist, utterly bereft of the singular pulchritude Hugo ascribes to her, and with the grossly under-read Demi Moore voicing her(not her again!). The weak and fickle Phoebus becomes the hunk of the day, and the stage is set for the love story of 1482.

Believe it or not, the story, with its muddled view of Parisian politics of the 1400's, has Frollo hunting down gypsies and schooling Quasimodo in the ways of the world: 'A' for 'abomination', 'B' for 'blasphemy', 'C' for 'contrition', 'D' for 'damnation' and such atrocities. Soon he lays siege to the cathedral because Esmeralda claims sanctuary within, and Quasimodo saves the day, whereupon he is accepted into the public fold. Pshaw!

I cannot believe I actually fell for this hogwash when I watched it. What a profound pity I hadn't read the book then. This is no mere adaptation. It flogs and decries character complexity, reducing motivations to well-known stereotypes: love, hate, envy. Even despite the excellent animation, and the so-called 'adult' undertones of 'sexuality', 'discrimination' and 'prejudice', this is an irresponsible and sloppy undertaking passing for wholesome entertainment.

Finally, the point isn't even this one trifling transgression of the strictures of intelligent adaptation. Heaven knows there have been worse instances of the same.

I am deeply perplexed. What exactly is the responsibility of a modern artist, especially operating in a medium as conducive to popular consumption as cinema? Is it that of the martinet, to unleash personal opinion and make a didactic statement that brooks no interference? Is this enriching the art form? Is anything permissible in the name of populist appeal? Gainsaying true genius? Banking on the notoriously short memory span and credulity of modern audiences to feed them a skewed, at times banal, and at others grotesquely fantastic view of humanity? Of art? It is bewildering to realise how much we put up with in the name of art, that vague, hazy term interchangeably used with 'pop culture', to imply instant gratification.

Who is to blame? Is it too short-sighted to chastise the modern youth, sleepwalking his way through a soulless, meandering existence with few cultural touchstones and fewer instances of genuine creativity? It is no coincidence that the Classics are dying a comprehensive and all-encompassing death, so much so that they seem like relics from a long-forgotten past. That is not to say nothing of any significance emerges today.

But who is looking? ....