Frank Cottrell-Boyce: 'Some films are unquestionably better than their source material'
The screenwriter speaks of his new movie Kensuke's Kingdom.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
This week sees the release of the film version of Michael Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom. The book, about a boy shipwrecked on an island, is a beloved classic. The directors have made it into a beautiful animation, which Sir Michael adores. But I know that someone at a screening will put their hand up to tell me, as the film's screenwriter, that "it's not as good as the book", with the implication that films can never be as good as books.
On school visits, I will be quizzed about the value of showing children adaptations of classics. Does the movie or TV series help them find their way through it? Or does the movie's view of a book stop children having their own response? I'm supposed to pick a side. And because – as the newly crowned UK children's laureate – my job is to celebrate the power of books and reading, I'm supposed to pick books.
Some films – Jaws, The Godfather, The 39 Steps – are unquestionably better in every way than their source material. Sometimes a screen adaptation can mine a beautiful, simple universal truth from under a mountain of chatter.
Disney's Pinocchio, for instance, asks us what it takes to be a decent human being, but Carlo Collodi's book is a preachy warning about industrialisation in the newly unified Italy. Pinocchio doesn't wish upon a star, but he does kill the cricket!
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John Masefield's Box of Delights has the worst ending of any book ever (it was all a dream), but the BBC's 1984 adaptation is so utterly enchanting that thousands of people – myself included – rewatch it every Advent.
The Wizard of Oz comes to us as the great celebration of home and friendship, but the book (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) is clogged with references to American monetary policy. The yellow brick road is the gold standard and Dorothy's magic slippers (silver, not ruby, in the book) can be seen as a reference to the devaluation of cash. I’m making it sound more action-packed than it really is.
The film of that book didn't come to be seen as a classic until the age of television brought it into our homes. The studio wanted to drop the song Over the Rainbow. The story had to find its way towards us, losing its unnecessary baggage, becoming more beautiful with every step.
Think of the way, after all his adventures and adaptations, Paddington Bear came to speak for all of us when he said, "Thank you, Ma'am, for everything" at the Platinum Jubilee. Or the way James Bond came to embody British cool in all its senses at the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. One of the strangest things about my life is that the Queen acted twice in her life and both times I was part of the writing team.
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A great adaptation for film or television can obliterate its parent book. No one reads The Wonderful Wizard of Oz now. I'm not sure that anyone reads PL Travers's Mary Poppins books – though they should. They're much funnier, more spiky and wilder than the Disney film. Wilder even than Dick Van Dyke's bizarre accent.
A good film simplifies – maybe refines is a better word. But there's the rub. Those eccentricities – the bits that impede the flow, that muddy the meaning – they’re the human bits. This is why books are important.
Books can be written by any kind of person. You could make a list of the 10 most important books in history and maybe five of them would be written by people who were in prison, in hiding, or in slavery. Aesop himself is believed to have been a slave. Only books capture all the voices.
The films of The Lord of the Rings or Mary Poppins or The Wizard of Oz are towering works of art. But their perfection makes them frictionless. It’s in the flaws in these books that we glimpse the infuriating, adorable, bonkers human. When we watch a great movie we share a great story. When we read a book we encounter another soul.
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Kensuke's Kingdom is released in UK cinemas on 2nd August 2024.
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