It's an obvious cliché to state that goods books don't make for good movies . Sometimes the opposite is true where literary trash like JAWS or THE GODFATHER make outstanding movies but it's probably the best known fact about film making is that the book is nearly always better . ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH is a good example of this . Solzhenitsyn,s novel caused shock waves in the Soviet Union in 1962 so it's difficult to imagine that the film version would have a similar effect in the world of cinema
The problem with adapting a book to cinema is that it needs to be plot driven and that is lacking in DENISOVICH . The story entirely centres around a typical day in a Soviet gulag , what the protagonist does during his working day and what Ivan and his fellow inmates have to endure . All this makes for compelling reading on the printed page as exposition is given through Ivan's thought processes . It's difficult to do this in cinema where things have to be spelt out in voice over for the audience to understand what is happening . A good example is the audience being told that Ivan isn't having custard for his breakfast but a porridge composed of boiled grass
Director Casper Wrede probably does his best considering the problems inherent in making an unfilmable novel for cinema . The cinematography is apporiatly bleak and Arne Nordheim,s score is subliminally discordant and atmospheric and there's a certain irony of casting Tom Courteney in the title since he's best known role was Pasha Antipov from DR ZHIVAGO , an idealist who starts of as a principled romantic then becomes an unfeeling monster for the Bolsheviks
Unfortunately for everyone involved in the film making process this is a movie that could never be adapted successfully , and is one on that would never appeal for a mainstream audience , especially today when people are used to seeing a nice happy ending to prison movies
The problem with adapting a book to cinema is that it needs to be plot driven and that is lacking in DENISOVICH . The story entirely centres around a typical day in a Soviet gulag , what the protagonist does during his working day and what Ivan and his fellow inmates have to endure . All this makes for compelling reading on the printed page as exposition is given through Ivan's thought processes . It's difficult to do this in cinema where things have to be spelt out in voice over for the audience to understand what is happening . A good example is the audience being told that Ivan isn't having custard for his breakfast but a porridge composed of boiled grass
Director Casper Wrede probably does his best considering the problems inherent in making an unfilmable novel for cinema . The cinematography is apporiatly bleak and Arne Nordheim,s score is subliminally discordant and atmospheric and there's a certain irony of casting Tom Courteney in the title since he's best known role was Pasha Antipov from DR ZHIVAGO , an idealist who starts of as a principled romantic then becomes an unfeeling monster for the Bolsheviks
Unfortunately for everyone involved in the film making process this is a movie that could never be adapted successfully , and is one on that would never appeal for a mainstream audience , especially today when people are used to seeing a nice happy ending to prison movies