Adaptation as Bricklaying

I thought Give Us This Day to be an excellent adaptation of Christ in Concrete. It attempts to address many of the same potential problems the class attached to the novel, especially the overly romanticized characterization of Geremio. Instead of portraying him as literally a Christ buried in concrete, the film offers us a more well-rounded portrayal of him: his character faults and strengths, including how they interact with a socio-economic environment that only cares for the laborer one out of every three weeks, when he's needed to lay bricks, and only pays up when he's dead. We also get a potentially more rounded characterization of Annuziata as well. She's no longer a Jesu-nut but periodically drinks wine before the sun goes down and is primarily interested in owning property.

This is not to say that I liked the film better than the novel or that I liked the film's characters better than those of the novel. Different mediums/forms offer different ways of portraying subject-matter, and not necessarily the same subject-matter either. The film is interested in the family's struggle to buy a house, whereas the book is interested in the family's struggle to survive. They also deal with different primary characters--the film with Geremio and Annuziata and the novel with Paul and to a lesser extent Annuziata. Perhaps this is what makes the film so successful as an adaptation: not trying to replicate the novel's narrative but explore unresolved aspects of it, adding its own brick to those of the novel.