‘Spenser’: The book is better
There are many different ways to successfully adapt a book to the screen, and then there is whatever director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg did to “Spenser Confidential,” recently released by Netflix.
Adaptation can be tricky. At the risk of stating the obvious, books and TV/film are two different mediums and the way we experience stories in one is not the same as the other. In books, we have access to characters either through first-person narration where they can share things directly, or third-person narration, where at times, we’re given the ability to read minds.
Ultimately, the visual medium needs to figure out how to translate what works on the page to what’s going to work on the screen, which isn’t easy.
How faithful to be to the original is a perennial problem. This was neatly solved in the limited-run series version of Celeste Ng’s “Little Fires Everywhere,” where tweaks to character — casting Kerry Washington in a role where the book’s character’s race is not defined — ratchets up the tension on the screen. Enhanced backstory that could be fully dramatized in a series, rather than summarized as in the book, complicates Reese Witherspoon’s portrayal of Elena as a kind of sympathetic villain.
Changes in the climax make for both a surprising and satisfying experience, even for those who read the book.
The 2020 film version of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” starring Anya Taylor-Joy, is highly similar to the 1996 film version, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. They are both faithful to Austen’s story, but having watched them both recently in a three-day period reveals how choices around emphasis and character can have a significant impact.
Paltrow’s “Emma” is light and gauzy, even when her character lets loose her wit at the expense of another; the critique lands with all the force of a swung pillow. Taylor-Joy’s portrayal and the 2020 version as a whole are considerably more spiky and the emotions are far more potent.
As we can see, being faithful doesn’t have to mean adhering perfectly to the original text, but if you’re going to release a film ostensibly rooted in an enduring book series that already has appeared previously as a television show (“Spenser: For Hire” starring Robert Urich), shouldn’t the result be at least somewhat recognizable?
The Spenser created by Robert B. Parker and later carried on by Ace Atkins is a cool customer, highly literate, slow to anger (but capable when provoked), and above all, a fan of using his noggin to solve a problem, preferring judicious use of violence.
The Spenser of “Spenser Confidential” is basically Mark Wahlberg, a mouthy wise guy who looks for a reason to fight, which can be generally entertaining, but is awfully jarring if you’re at all familiar with the books.
But even more jarring is is Spenser’s love interest, Cissy, played by Iliza Shlesinger as a foulmouthed, take-no-prisoners part of the crew. If you enjoy creative profanity — as I do — you’ll find Shlesinger the most entertaining part of the movie, but she’s nothing like Spenser’s longtime love in the novels, psychotherapist Susan Silverman.
I watched the film dumbfounded that they bothered to tie a Mark Wahlberg action pic to a well-established detective series that no one involved with the film seemed to have read.
This was a bigger mystery than anything Wahlberg and company confronted in the film itself.
Purity isn’t required, but one doesn’t expect outright rejection of the traits that make the original so popular. If you’re not interested in what makes the book interesting, why bother making a movie from it? by Jonas Jonasson
Jiles
Chiaverini
Robert Lindsey
“The Falcon and the Snowman” brings me back to the days when I’d pluck an adult true-story from my parents’ shelves and read it even though I probably wasn’t supposed to. It’s an amazing tale of how a couple of 20-somethings committed espionage. I’m going with another true story from the ’70s that sticks with me to this day:
Paul Read. by Piers
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