Hemmingway
I just watched the 1933 Farewell to Arms with Gary Cooper. It made me think about adaptations, puting books on screen. And, more than that, or, further than that, about how you translate between mediums.
When I read A Farewell to Arms, it was the style and rhythm of Hemmingway that made it interesting, not the plot. When taken to the screen, this was made even clearer. The amblance driver and nurse romance was shallow (as perahaps it was meant to be), only a diversion from the war which is just outside, but somehow always in the distance. Sitting on the couch, I recognized some of the dialogue between them, and their desperate need for diversion was conveyed. But, well, the feel of the read wasn't there. And, of course, well, I don't have room to criticize because I don't know how to capture the style any better. How to create the paragraphs in moving pictures?
It's like the only AP vocab word I was interested in, "synthesthetic." It's the idea of loud colors. Of warm melodies. Of crunchy scents and of foods that taste purple (all of which I know very well). To use one sense to describe another. And, I'd like to think that in the same way there is a painting that looks like (sounds like?) Lady be Good as sung by Ella Fitzgerald (the slow version, not the scat). And a sculpture like Heartbreaker a la Led Zeppelin. A cubist song. And in no way am I refering to shitty visualizers that peak on bass beats, it would have to be more than that.
Last year, Miss. Aguayo had a project where we picked a song to go with a painting from a particular period. I paired Gustave Caillebotte's Young Man at his Window with Epitaph for My Heart (the Magnetic Fields). It took a good page and a half of story to connect them, but I saw it and was satisfied.
When I read A Farewell to Arms, it was the style and rhythm of Hemmingway that made it interesting, not the plot. When taken to the screen, this was made even clearer. The amblance driver and nurse romance was shallow (as perahaps it was meant to be), only a diversion from the war which is just outside, but somehow always in the distance. Sitting on the couch, I recognized some of the dialogue between them, and their desperate need for diversion was conveyed. But, well, the feel of the read wasn't there. And, of course, well, I don't have room to criticize because I don't know how to capture the style any better. How to create the paragraphs in moving pictures?
It's like the only AP vocab word I was interested in, "synthesthetic." It's the idea of loud colors. Of warm melodies. Of crunchy scents and of foods that taste purple (all of which I know very well). To use one sense to describe another. And, I'd like to think that in the same way there is a painting that looks like (sounds like?) Lady be Good as sung by Ella Fitzgerald (the slow version, not the scat). And a sculpture like Heartbreaker a la Led Zeppelin. A cubist song. And in no way am I refering to shitty visualizers that peak on bass beats, it would have to be more than that.
Last year, Miss. Aguayo had a project where we picked a song to go with a painting from a particular period. I paired Gustave Caillebotte's Young Man at his Window with Epitaph for My Heart (the Magnetic Fields). It took a good page and a half of story to connect them, but I saw it and was satisfied.