![]() ![]() ![]() 2 Special thanks to Patrick Hilt (Universität Frankfurt/M.) on a research scholarship in Toronto in (.). ![]() This necessitates an occasional re-reading of Ondaatje's novel as well as critical reactions to it. What is intended here is a critical reading of Anthony Minghella's grandiose film in search of patterns of transformation and strategies of adaptation. 1 Any attempt at a line-by-line comparison and critique of an adaptation does not make much sense, for it would be asking the film to do what the novel has done already, almost like Borges 'ideal' translator of Don Quixote (see Bassnett 1997). To expect fidelity of a film to the novel on which it is based is as absurd as expecting a faithful translation-faithful to what standard? imposed by whom? (McFarlane 1996: 8-10). ![]() If that starting-point is a complex work of art, the transformation cannot but change, alter, adapt that work into something it is not, and this fact has long since been accepted in film studies (Beja 1979: 80-88). Nonetheless, by necessity any writer of screenplays will treat the work of fiction on which his idea is based as a starting-point for a new creation. 1 Ondaatje agrees in his comments on the screenplay (EP-SP: xv-xvi).ġTranslating a novel into film may not be what Oscar Wilde had in mind. ![]()
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