I finished reading Philip K. Dick's The Minority Report a few hours ago - on the bus to work. Yes, I have begun to read and complete my reading too! I began The Minority Report where I finished it - on the bus to work yesterday, and I half expected myself to lapse into a state of boredom and abandon the book altogether. But I didn't.
The book drew me into the world of precogs - partially because Dick writes so well and partially because the movie based on the book is my favourite. It drew me in and tied me, my attention, and my mind to the various elements and happenings in its futuristic world. A world that allowed people to escape to another planet (a frontier planet), a world where people were caught before they committed the crime, and a world that was about to be wrecked with one rivetting conspiracy that involved a slew of influential authorities.
As I read The... Report, I noticed that quite often, the story shifted gear just when my attention span nosedived and these shifts in gear rescued it from drowning altogether. The goings-on then assured me of a plausible twist in the proceedings, and went on to serve that twist with some clever explanatory side dishes as well. For my senses then, it made a hearty meal - a meal they hadn't had for a long long time.
The trouble - or the indigestion - began when I compared the story to what materialised onscreen in Spielberg's version of it. I realized that the movie was in a universe far removed from the one I read!
Spielberg had merely lifted the precogs and a few names from Dick's story, and spun a yarn that resembled nothing of what Dick had weaved. The climax did not share the same garment as that of the story. And infact, to say that Spielberg's enterprise was based on Dick's is a gross misrepresentation of the truth itself!
For a while, that seemed to me a discovery rather irritating to get over. You see I was under the impression that Spielberg had stuck to the storyline, and not even once did it cross my mind to check that impression against a synopsis of the actual story. It was Spielberg after all, and I know he does a splendid job. So I just took it for granted that he had been faithful to the original and that all the razmatazz, the splendid special effects, the futuristic technology was part of the parcel.
Well, I was wrong about all that: He wasn't faithful to it at all.
None of the movie's technology gadgets find a mention in any chapter. Cars do not run on upright roads, and no spyders (ID verifying spider-esque robots) go looking for the protagonist. No video images are segregated on a transparent screen in any department of PreCrime either. In fact, the precogs provide aural data recorded on good ol' tape and that's analysed and gleaned for possible criminals (and not murderers alone).
I liked the story. Its pace was quick; its descriptions were pert and precise; and direct speech was allowed only where necessary. The sentences were almost always active, the paragraphs were short enough, and the style was that of a writer who knows very well what he has to say, what he has to reveal, and what has to be kept hidden.
I liked the movie too. The plot mesmerized me. So did the visuals. The spyders, the cars, the image analyses that Spielberg crafted have yet to be matched. And the stunning cinematography that unveiled a world that has yet to get real dismissed any flaws that the script may have accidentally gathered. Minority Report - the movie - was vintage Spielberg at his best.
So, I was irritated and perplexed that I was so. Surely, I can allow for a director to make up his own world and pick only a fragment from another. And I surely can allow a dazzling imagination to rehash a story. It's just that - for some reason - I wanted the movie and the story to mirror each other. I wanted each to be true to the other.
That they weren't. They were true to the art of their creators. But they weren't the same. And the fact that I had to make my peace with that was more irritating than ever.
That irritation did not last long though. If a lie looks as sleek and fine - and pleases as well - as Spielberg's Minority Report, anyone will want to make excuses to justify it. Probably, that it was a lie did not count at all. The pleasure derived from it did - and the tingle it sent down my spine. That tingle and that pleasure mattered and so, I decided to throw my irritation down the bin and let both book and movie remain my favourites till another such pair comes my way.
The book drew me into the world of precogs - partially because Dick writes so well and partially because the movie based on the book is my favourite. It drew me in and tied me, my attention, and my mind to the various elements and happenings in its futuristic world. A world that allowed people to escape to another planet (a frontier planet), a world where people were caught before they committed the crime, and a world that was about to be wrecked with one rivetting conspiracy that involved a slew of influential authorities.
As I read The... Report, I noticed that quite often, the story shifted gear just when my attention span nosedived and these shifts in gear rescued it from drowning altogether. The goings-on then assured me of a plausible twist in the proceedings, and went on to serve that twist with some clever explanatory side dishes as well. For my senses then, it made a hearty meal - a meal they hadn't had for a long long time.
The trouble - or the indigestion - began when I compared the story to what materialised onscreen in Spielberg's version of it. I realized that the movie was in a universe far removed from the one I read!
Spielberg had merely lifted the precogs and a few names from Dick's story, and spun a yarn that resembled nothing of what Dick had weaved. The climax did not share the same garment as that of the story. And infact, to say that Spielberg's enterprise was based on Dick's is a gross misrepresentation of the truth itself!
For a while, that seemed to me a discovery rather irritating to get over. You see I was under the impression that Spielberg had stuck to the storyline, and not even once did it cross my mind to check that impression against a synopsis of the actual story. It was Spielberg after all, and I know he does a splendid job. So I just took it for granted that he had been faithful to the original and that all the razmatazz, the splendid special effects, the futuristic technology was part of the parcel.
Well, I was wrong about all that: He wasn't faithful to it at all.
None of the movie's technology gadgets find a mention in any chapter. Cars do not run on upright roads, and no spyders (ID verifying spider-esque robots) go looking for the protagonist. No video images are segregated on a transparent screen in any department of PreCrime either. In fact, the precogs provide aural data recorded on good ol' tape and that's analysed and gleaned for possible criminals (and not murderers alone).
I liked the story. Its pace was quick; its descriptions were pert and precise; and direct speech was allowed only where necessary. The sentences were almost always active, the paragraphs were short enough, and the style was that of a writer who knows very well what he has to say, what he has to reveal, and what has to be kept hidden.
I liked the movie too. The plot mesmerized me. So did the visuals. The spyders, the cars, the image analyses that Spielberg crafted have yet to be matched. And the stunning cinematography that unveiled a world that has yet to get real dismissed any flaws that the script may have accidentally gathered. Minority Report - the movie - was vintage Spielberg at his best.
So, I was irritated and perplexed that I was so. Surely, I can allow for a director to make up his own world and pick only a fragment from another. And I surely can allow a dazzling imagination to rehash a story. It's just that - for some reason - I wanted the movie and the story to mirror each other. I wanted each to be true to the other.
That they weren't. They were true to the art of their creators. But they weren't the same. And the fact that I had to make my peace with that was more irritating than ever.
That irritation did not last long though. If a lie looks as sleek and fine - and pleases as well - as Spielberg's Minority Report, anyone will want to make excuses to justify it. Probably, that it was a lie did not count at all. The pleasure derived from it did - and the tingle it sent down my spine. That tingle and that pleasure mattered and so, I decided to throw my irritation down the bin and let both book and movie remain my favourites till another such pair comes my way.
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