Case Studies of Film Adaptation
text: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Stoppard, 1967)
As an adaptation, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead effectively isolates the distinctions between the visual presentation of drama and that of film. The movie adheres closely to the structure and dialogue of the play, and since Tom Stoppard is the work's originator as well as its translator, studying Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead encourages us to concentrate on theoretical problems specific to drama adaptation without dwelling on authorial intent. Thus, the difficulty in translating this work rests almost entirely on fundamental differences between the two media. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead illustrates the primary discrepancy: film exchanges the immediacy of drama for a temporal and spatial flexibility that plays lack.
When performed on stage, the actors are alone. This reinforces the sense of abandonment they express in their dialogue, and it also erodes the customary distance between performers and the audience. The actors, particularly the title characters, implicate the spectators in their plight. This violation of convention is successful precisely because the audience is cognizant of what is usually appropriate. The drama thus succeeds in actuating the Player's explanation of his trade: "We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off "(28).
Whereas the play exploits the immediacy of the drama medium to invoke a sense of shared isolation between the performers and the audience, the film constructs an additional barrier. The film audience is entirely separate from the actors; this further enunciates the isolation of the individual. Even though Stoppard uses much of the original dialogue verbatim in the adaptation, the meaning becomes less pronounced as the complicity of the audience diminishes. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern's plight is more completely established, but the relationship between their situation and that of the cinema audience is more obscure than it was on the stage.
Stoppard's play is typically staged without elaborate scenery; this minimalist presentation assists the play's existential mood. The film, in contrast, features a richly detailed mise-en-scene in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are perpetually immersed in smoke or obscuring fogs. Stoppard uses film's spacial and temporal flexibility to create a comically confusing environment for the main characters. They wander around Elsinore without direction, never certain where they are, where they are going, or where they are supposed to be. In the play, the audience is lost along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but in the film, we are removed from them. Thus, we are more readily encouraged to laugh at their predicament rather than empathize with it.
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Internet
Movie Database Site
Joost Kuurman, with Wim van Klaveren and
Simon Popma, "An Interview with Tom Stoppard," Critical Essays on Tom Stoppard,
ed. Anthony Jenkins (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1990) excerpts 15-27.
The featured interview with Tom Stoppard offers glimpses into the
adaptation process in general and his work in particular. Stoppard discusses his
philosophy on playrwriting, his film viewing, his inspirations, and his intentions in
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Featured samples of conversation between
Joost Kuurman and Tom Stoppard do not offer comprehensive insight into the playwright's
ideas, but they focus attention on fundamental distinctions between film and drama.
Part of Northern Virginia Community College's Dogwood Project.
This page is copyright © 2000, Bridget Robin Pool.
Last Modified Monday, January 29, 2001