Visualisation in Filmed Drama
Jan. 29th, 2017 05:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinFor a few minutes, let's escape to a completely fictional universe where kind, noble, intelligent people are pressed by conviction and circumstance to make a stand against violent, greedy, ignorant ones.
I've been a fan of Lemony Snicket most of my adult life, but never imagined his books would help me parse current events. How lucky we are the Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events should come along just when it should be so bafflingly relevant.
It wasn't until I started watching the new series that I realised just how incredibly formative these books were in my life. They say the influences you gather in early adulthood can shape your adult character almost as much as your childhood – well, I blundered into the Snicket audiobooks to keep me entertained on my first animation job at the age of 20, and while Discworld had a profound impact from my late teens and into early independence, A Series of Unfortunate Events punched above its weight in making me the adult I am today. It gave me permission to align myself with the intellectual and cultured, a side of humanity viewed with some scepticism in the world from which I'd come. They gave me an aesthetic, both artistic and personal, though the latter was something I didn't realise until I stood up from watching an episode and caught sight of myself in the mirror. And it's probably not too bold to draw a line from obsessively cross-referencing sources to find what was really going on with VFD, to obsessively cross-referencing sources to find what was really going on in Antarctica between 1910 and 1913.
I wasn't immediately excited when I heard Netflix was going to do a serial adaptation of the books. The 2004 movie got some things right, but some more important things wrong, and having worked in high-profile mainstream entertainment in the meantime, I didn't believe they'd be allowed to film the books in a manner faithful to both story and tone. Too indefinable! Too idiosyncratic! Too intelligentsia! But when the first promotional material for the show came out, they seemed to know exactly what they were doing – more came out and I lost hope again – then at last I semi-reluctantly gave the first episode a try, and within ten minutes was completely sold on it and reverted to the giddy early-twenty-something who ran around Vancouver taking blurry black-and-white photos and cracking up at apparently random things.
I'm not going to go into a point-by-point of likes and dislikes, as that will take all afternoon, and the only person interested in it is me. Instead, here are some general statements from an avowed fan and someone far more familiar with the audiobooks than any adult ought to be:
– While the series is remarkably faithful, some things are different from the books. To my surprise these are almost all for the better. I suppose that's a benefit of having the author as one of your executive producers, and writer of half the episodes. The Miserable Mill, in particular, I found improved a good deal, which is saying something as that's the first book I listened to, so I have a special attachment to the original. Some of the things that had been cut or changed I missed, and I was wrongfooted once or twice when things were visualised in a way very different from what I'd imagined (mainly due to San Francisco influencing my setting of the Baudelaires' home city) but I can't honestly say I recall one change I can't forgive.
– People who go read the series after watching the show are going to be perplexed as to why there's no mention of any secret organisation in the books adapted for Netflix. I have a theory that the whole VFD subplot didn't occur to Mr. Handler until writing The Miserable Mill, and the retconning necessary to bring the first three books into the thread is partly why it's so delightfully absurd. If this is true, adapting these early books for the screen gave him the chance to 'rewrite' them with the subplot in place from the beginning, and it was a joy and very rare privilege to see how the original artist would revisit his own material and 'fix' it.
– The only complaint I've heard about the show, from my very limited circle of friends who've seen it, is about Neil Patrick Harris' portrayal of Olaf. I'm not sure whether this is a critique of his character, or just the fact he's Neil Patrick Harris. Speaking as someone who knows Book Olaf quite well, Harris' performance was dead on; so perfectly nailed, in fact, that I wondered if he had been a fan of the books before coming onto the show. If you dislike NPH for being NPH, well, that's your problem; if you dislike his Olaf on purely objective grounds, then you have an issue with the author's intent, because that's exactly how he's written.
– I love how the production design has taken stylistic cues, if not direct reference, from Brett Helquist's illustrations. The movie went for cartoon-gothic Tim Burton pastiche, which is fun, but makes the ridiculous things that happen seem less ridiculous, because you're in such an obviously fantastical world. The slightly stretched realism of Helquist, and the Netflix show, parallels the tone of the books quite well. I'd always thought Wes Anderson would have done a good job of directing Snicket for the screen, as his films walk that same quirky line (Grand Budapest Hotel is a more Snickety movie than the actual Snicket movie, IMO); they've succeeded without him, here, but in much the same vein.
– OK, one specific: It's kind of Rule 1 in the bookverse that you never see Lemony Snicket's face. One of the main reasons I lost hope for the Netflix adaptation was that they put him front and centre in the trailer, narrating to camera. It's not that Patrick Warburton doesn't do a good job, but Mr Snicket would never do that! I happened upon a logical workaround that took care of this in a surprisingly obvious way: This is, of course, not a factual depiction of the lives of the Baudelaires, but a dramatic reconstruction; Lemony Snicket is, of course, being played by an actor, and naturally there is no problem with showing an actor's face onscreen, because the actor is not on the run from a villainous cabal (… yet). Snicket himself, if he were to appear, would do so in disguise, perhaps as a seller of fish heads on the shore of Lake Lachrymose, just to give a purely hypothetical example. (Always read the credits, kids!)
If there's a downside to having such a good adaptation, it's that now my hopes are very high for the second series. If it's another batch of four books, it will cover all of my favourites, and this is too exciting for words! I actually have to stop myself thinking about it because I know my hopes are already too high – but I hope, at the very least, that they start on it soon, so I don't have to wait long to find out.
If this series has been your introduction to Lemony Snicket, then sleep easy – it's been a good one. If you like it, you'll probably like the books. Might I also heartily recommend the audiobooks, for long car journeys, or non-word-related workdays, or just a bit of company as you unwind from a day of fighting injustice and bad taste in your off-the-grid safehouse far up in the mountains. You can probably find a few of them at a local public library. Support your library!
I've been a fan of Lemony Snicket most of my adult life, but never imagined his books would help me parse current events. How lucky we are the Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events should come along just when it should be so bafflingly relevant.
It wasn't until I started watching the new series that I realised just how incredibly formative these books were in my life. They say the influences you gather in early adulthood can shape your adult character almost as much as your childhood – well, I blundered into the Snicket audiobooks to keep me entertained on my first animation job at the age of 20, and while Discworld had a profound impact from my late teens and into early independence, A Series of Unfortunate Events punched above its weight in making me the adult I am today. It gave me permission to align myself with the intellectual and cultured, a side of humanity viewed with some scepticism in the world from which I'd come. They gave me an aesthetic, both artistic and personal, though the latter was something I didn't realise until I stood up from watching an episode and caught sight of myself in the mirror. And it's probably not too bold to draw a line from obsessively cross-referencing sources to find what was really going on with VFD, to obsessively cross-referencing sources to find what was really going on in Antarctica between 1910 and 1913.I wasn't immediately excited when I heard Netflix was going to do a serial adaptation of the books. The 2004 movie got some things right, but some more important things wrong, and having worked in high-profile mainstream entertainment in the meantime, I didn't believe they'd be allowed to film the books in a manner faithful to both story and tone. Too indefinable! Too idiosyncratic! Too intelligentsia! But when the first promotional material for the show came out, they seemed to know exactly what they were doing – more came out and I lost hope again – then at last I semi-reluctantly gave the first episode a try, and within ten minutes was completely sold on it and reverted to the giddy early-twenty-something who ran around Vancouver taking blurry black-and-white photos and cracking up at apparently random things.
I'm not going to go into a point-by-point of likes and dislikes, as that will take all afternoon, and the only person interested in it is me. Instead, here are some general statements from an avowed fan and someone far more familiar with the audiobooks than any adult ought to be:
– While the series is remarkably faithful, some things are different from the books. To my surprise these are almost all for the better. I suppose that's a benefit of having the author as one of your executive producers, and writer of half the episodes. The Miserable Mill, in particular, I found improved a good deal, which is saying something as that's the first book I listened to, so I have a special attachment to the original. Some of the things that had been cut or changed I missed, and I was wrongfooted once or twice when things were visualised in a way very different from what I'd imagined (mainly due to San Francisco influencing my setting of the Baudelaires' home city) but I can't honestly say I recall one change I can't forgive.
– People who go read the series after watching the show are going to be perplexed as to why there's no mention of any secret organisation in the books adapted for Netflix. I have a theory that the whole VFD subplot didn't occur to Mr. Handler until writing The Miserable Mill, and the retconning necessary to bring the first three books into the thread is partly why it's so delightfully absurd. If this is true, adapting these early books for the screen gave him the chance to 'rewrite' them with the subplot in place from the beginning, and it was a joy and very rare privilege to see how the original artist would revisit his own material and 'fix' it.
– The only complaint I've heard about the show, from my very limited circle of friends who've seen it, is about Neil Patrick Harris' portrayal of Olaf. I'm not sure whether this is a critique of his character, or just the fact he's Neil Patrick Harris. Speaking as someone who knows Book Olaf quite well, Harris' performance was dead on; so perfectly nailed, in fact, that I wondered if he had been a fan of the books before coming onto the show. If you dislike NPH for being NPH, well, that's your problem; if you dislike his Olaf on purely objective grounds, then you have an issue with the author's intent, because that's exactly how he's written.
– I love how the production design has taken stylistic cues, if not direct reference, from Brett Helquist's illustrations. The movie went for cartoon-gothic Tim Burton pastiche, which is fun, but makes the ridiculous things that happen seem less ridiculous, because you're in such an obviously fantastical world. The slightly stretched realism of Helquist, and the Netflix show, parallels the tone of the books quite well. I'd always thought Wes Anderson would have done a good job of directing Snicket for the screen, as his films walk that same quirky line (Grand Budapest Hotel is a more Snickety movie than the actual Snicket movie, IMO); they've succeeded without him, here, but in much the same vein.
– OK, one specific: It's kind of Rule 1 in the bookverse that you never see Lemony Snicket's face. One of the main reasons I lost hope for the Netflix adaptation was that they put him front and centre in the trailer, narrating to camera. It's not that Patrick Warburton doesn't do a good job, but Mr Snicket would never do that! I happened upon a logical workaround that took care of this in a surprisingly obvious way: This is, of course, not a factual depiction of the lives of the Baudelaires, but a dramatic reconstruction; Lemony Snicket is, of course, being played by an actor, and naturally there is no problem with showing an actor's face onscreen, because the actor is not on the run from a villainous cabal (… yet). Snicket himself, if he were to appear, would do so in disguise, perhaps as a seller of fish heads on the shore of Lake Lachrymose, just to give a purely hypothetical example. (Always read the credits, kids!)
If there's a downside to having such a good adaptation, it's that now my hopes are very high for the second series. If it's another batch of four books, it will cover all of my favourites, and this is too exciting for words! I actually have to stop myself thinking about it because I know my hopes are already too high – but I hope, at the very least, that they start on it soon, so I don't have to wait long to find out.
If this series has been your introduction to Lemony Snicket, then sleep easy – it's been a good one. If you like it, you'll probably like the books. Might I also heartily recommend the audiobooks, for long car journeys, or non-word-related workdays, or just a bit of company as you unwind from a day of fighting injustice and bad taste in your off-the-grid safehouse far up in the mountains. You can probably find a few of them at a local public library. Support your library!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-29 10:22 pm (UTC)