Read the Book Vs. See the Movie? Which Do You Choose?

Everyone’s thought about doing it at least once, usually in school when the English teacher assigns a book for which there is a movie, “I could just watch the movie.” leaps to the student's mind.

English teachers are usually smart enough to include test questions about things that weren’t in the movie.  So most of us just knuckled down and read the book. Some of them were even enjoyable.  A lot of them weren’t.

Now we are adults.  Great movies come out all the time based on great books. Without an English test to pass, many of us just see the movie.  We are busy people.  A movie is an investment of a few hours at most.  A book can take a week or more depending on how fast a person reads.  Nevertheless, it is still important to read the book.  

The reason you cannot just see the movie is that no matter how faithful the director and producer are to the book, they will still produce a move that is a completely different piece of art.  Film and print are completely different mediums.  

A film can capture the setting of a story in one sweeping camera shot instead of paragraph upon paragraph of description.  The movement and action of a story can be better portrayed in a film.  There are no car chases in books. In a movie, though, a car chase is great.  So much so that ‘cut to the chase’ has become a colloquialism.   

A book, however, gives us more of the story.  We learn more about the characters’ inner thoughts and motives.  We get the details of their past and their hopes for the future.  The movie of The Time Traveler’s Wife is a rich, gripping story but the book gives the reader  much more of the passionate connection that holds Henry and Clare together across time.   

Furthermore, the appealing brevity of a movie necessitates parts of the story being left out.  Many women who adore the movie Gone With The Wind are stunned to find out that Scarlett, in the book, had two other children before she had Bonnie.  Anyone who enjoyed the gritty realism of A Time to Kill, but never read the book missed even greater realism and starker truths. 

A final reason to read the book is that often, for many different reasons, the book doesn’t transfer as well to film.  A great example is the Harry Potter series. Devotees of the series will tell you that the first three movies captured the stories very well.  The fourth, fifth and sixth movies, possibly because of producer and director changes, missed the story so much that many denounce them as monstrosities.

Certainly it is no crime to see a great movie and never read the book upon which it is based.  It is perfectly satisfying to see all three Lord of the Rings movies without ever reading the books.  However, one misses out on some of the characters, adventures and illuminating depths of the main characters’ journeys.