Based on the Book...

Hello and welcome to the very first Mad Poet's Corner blog. This inaugural blog coincides with the opening weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival. So the blogging - if any - this week is going to be about film, not so much about the written word.

That said, however, three of the four films I have seen thus far were all based on books: Creation was adapted from Annie's Box by Randal Keynes. The Vintner's Luck was a bestseller written by Kiwi author Elizabeth Knox. Oscar Wilde's famous novel provided the screenplay for Oliver Parker's remake, Dorian Gray.

With the screening of Bright Star (about Keats), a movie with a very well-known title, Leaves of Grass, and The Road, based on a Cormac McCarthy novel, it's safe to say that the world of letters still holds a good deal of fascination for filmmakers.

While much is debated about the merits and drawbacks of adaptations in general, I am intrigued by them. I enjoy seeing text spring to life visually. The sensitivity and creativity that is required to translate pages into screen images is inarguably commendable. Sometimes the efforts soar; other times they fall flat. Jon Amiel, the director of Creation commented on this very thing during the Q & A after the film. I believe he said that instead of calling them adaptations, they should be called "interpretations," as that is what they truly are. In fact, to be honest, even readers are "interpreting" as they read. A book will speak to each individual differently. So too a film.

So who am I to say that this or that has failed or succeeded? What is important in the end is the effort and the communication. The attempt to share a vision. For all of our stories are one - part of the human drama that goes on and on.

I like to think of the Toronto Film Festival not as a series of screenings of films from this part of the world or that, not as an opportunity to spot celebrities, not as fodder for film critics, but as a great conversation. A conversation played out in words and images among people who are hoping to understand the experience of being human a little bit better by sharing it and speaking about it. That we do this in dazzling, exciting and novel ways is a testament to the human spirit and the joy of creativity.

Be it book or film.