The difference between the forms of I Remember Mama (the play and movie) and Kathryn Forbes’s novel is very apparent. The need to add certain features to the film to compensate for it being a film shows the disparity between the two different mediums. The way Uncle Chris and the aunts play such a more significant comedic role suggest that the movie must make-up for the lack of continuity that presents itself in the book form. I think his makes a lot of sense in terms of audience views – people can put down a book at any time, but they do not watch a movie in several different sections. This suggests that the choppiness of her stories lends more to the television format, but who’s to say what this format needs to be. In Pulp Fiction, Tarantino tells the overlapping stories of three different characters. Why is the film world so adverse to discontinuity in their movies that they must correct adaptation to fix that? Is this why people are so concerned with fidelity? Because movies tend to try and compensate for a lack of structure in the novel they are trying to adapt? How has this structure become the standard for modern film?
Another aspect of the transformation in these forms came from a point Lipsitz brought up in his argument about the focus on the modern family. A lot of the focus in the film comes from the need of the filmmakers to present an ‘ideal home’ lifestyle. This focus shows us that the evolution of time affects the evolution of adaptation. A modern adapted piece cannot in represent the same thing as the original because the modern view will take on an entirely different perspective. We’ve discussed time before as a big part of adaptation, but I think it must be focused on much more. So important is the time period to the study of adaptation? Does adaptation not evolve simultaneously with time?
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