Paedantic Basterd

So I'm watching the film Hotel New Hampshire because I just finished the book Hotel New Hampshire and I wanted to see how it was adapted.

The answer is terribly. Dear god, the direction of this film is truly terrible. The pacing is awful because the script writer tried to cram an entire lifetime into a film AND chose not to show the passage of time by keeping the characters the same age for all of it. The acting is hammy. There are comedic moments which are entirely inappropriate, and direction decisions to accompany them (such as the speeding up of the film during comedic scenes). The relationship between Franny and John feels gross because we didn't see how it progressed; it was just THERE, with no nuance or organic explanation. NONE of the beauty of Irving's language was even attempted in the direction or setting of the film. I mean, with writing like that the least you can do is make a visually stunning film to try and reflect it.

I mean, of course it was garbage. That's why I didn't know a film had been made until after googling the book cover, but it's a shame because it could be so beautiful. In my mind it looks much more like a Wes Anderson film (of course, he could never direct it because it's halfway between the Royal Tenenbaums and the Grand Budapest, so it's derivative of his existing work. Perhaps that's why I read it with him in mind in the first place).

Irving himself said that if he had to level a criticism at the film, it would be that it was too faithful to the book and tried to include too much. I think that's fair, but also encouraging. Honestly, films should be different from books. What you can do in a book is VERY different from what you can do in a script. They're completely different mediums of artwork that necessitate different approaches, and while we all want films to be faithful to the books they came from, it's not possible to replicate a book onscreen. Telling and showing are two completely different processes that allow different liberties and require different structures.

I'm honestly pretty surprised the ****ty 80s version was made given the nature of Franny and John's relationship. Anyways, point is, I still think a stunning Hotel New Hampshire could be made.

EDIT: Also, the film makes no ****ing sense if you haven't read the book. One of the most important things about an adaptation is that people can follow the plot if they aren't familiar with the book. You still have to tell the story, you can't just film a hodgepodge of scenes from a book and hope it makes sense with no underlying structure, character development, or exposition.