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Of Mice and Men Film and Book Contrast In my essay I will explore similarities and differences of the novel Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck and the movie Of Mice and Men directed by Gary Sinise. In particular, I will examine the way Gary Sinise and John Steinbeck saw the tragedy and the relationships between George and Lennie, pointing out the differences of the accents set in the film and in the movie. Also I will discuss the interpretation and performance of the main characters - George and Lennie - in the film, supporting my argumentation's with the citation of the critics and reviews of the novel. Here, I will also compare my own expectations after reading the novel with what I saw in the movie. And finally, I will make a conclusion and place my findings in the context of creativity and freedom of expression in art. Unlike the film, the novel stats with the two main characters - George Milton and Lennie Small - walking along the river.
In this way, and in the way they walk and with the help of the episode of drinking water, John Steinbeck wanted to focus the attention of readers on the positive side of the relationships between George and Lennie. Here I mean Georges parental feelings, his love, his loyalty to Lennie and guidance he made to protect and take care of his mentally deficient companion. On the other hand, I think the film tends to stress drama and violence. This is achieved by one of the first scenes in the movie where a woman is running and screaming with fright and George and Lennie are trying to escape. I think this difference took place because, due to the tastes of modern public and a kind of tendency in filmmaking, Gary Sinise wanted to emphasize tragedy of the story with putting in it frequent and colorful scenes of harsh and brutal violence. My expectations of the main character - George - were met completely by the performance of Gary Sinise.
He has taciturn strength and a gift for conveying unexpressed feeling, - wrote the critics. And I fully agree with this statement. The author of the novel devices George as a man with a strong will, who feels it is his duty to control and to take care of Lennie, and, notwithstanding his own disappointment in life and feeling of helplessness in the conditions he has to face, George, like the only one sensible in their company, overcomes hardships and solves the problems concerning life support and future of them two. George treats Lennie as a child and bears Lennie's whims and wild tricks with tolerance. At the same time, it is not so easy to stay calm when Lennie's actions become violent and lead to death and misery of living beings. In one of the chapters George looses his temper and names the price he has to pay for his parenting and love to Lennie: 'I got you!
You can't keep a job and you lose me ever' job I get. Jus' keep me shown' all over the country all the time. An' that ain't the worst. You get in trouble. You do bad things and I got to get you out. '" (chapter 1, p. 11) In the film Sinise managed to show the inner strength and parental feelings of George, adding signs of his own tragedy: Sinise is just right as world-weary George, who loves Lennie and wants to help him but who feels somewhat frustrated and helpless about his own life.
According to the novel, Lennie, is enormously big and strong, like a giant. Though Lennie is simple and has mind deficiency. This causes his learning difficulty, especially seen in the first chapter, when George asks Lennie if he remembers where they are going. The giant with a mind of a child answers honestly that he has no idea. Even when George repeats the purpose of their trip, after a while, Lennie again is not capable to name it.
Notwithstanding his mind handicap, Lennie is well-coordinated and can perform repetitive manual jobs which require enough skill. This is evidenced in the story through the episodes where Lennie is driving a cultivator or bucking barley. On the whole, when I read the book, I imagined Lennie as a round headed man with sharp features of his face and enormously big body. My imagined Lennie was rude and awkward, speaking slowly and mostly unclear in his bad dialectal language, and, what is significant, having gestures or some special moments in his conduct which can reveal his mental weakness.
However, the character of Lennie was represented and played somewhat differently in the film. Stanley Kauffmann in his article in The New Republic, (November 2, 1992, pp. 24 - 25) remarked about the discrepancies in the performance of the actor - John Malkovich - who was playing Lennie in the movie. In particular, the critic claimed that Malkovich attempted to bring some intelligence into the image of the brutal ox with a head of a child, as many reviews of the book called Lennie. First, according to Kauffmann, it was viewed in the hands of the actor: They never seem the hands of a burly, manual worker, hands of potential menace. (The New Republic, November 2, 1992, pp. 24 - 25). Second, Malkovich was not successful to imitate the speech of the retarded. Certainly I can't rule that no retarded person speaks that way: I'm talking only of dramatic aptness. - wrote Kauffmann in his article.
And then he continued. - Malkovich sounds like a stock party imitation of a mental defective, done for laughs. (The New Republic, November 2, 1992, pp. 24 - 25) Was it intentional in the play in the artist? If yes, then what meaning did he want to convey? The critic Stanley Kauffmann came to the conclusion, that this kind of speech was not intended by Malkovich. The artist simply failed to create the character in a complete way: This was not his intent, of course, but compared with Broderick Crawford, Lon Chaney Jr. , and James Earl Jones in the role, Malkovich lacks entirely the aura of an earnest, bewildered giant. (The New Republic, November 2, 1992, pp. 24 - 25) All in all, the differences between the film and the novel mentioned above do not imply that film is unfinished or lacks something in comparison with the original story. In my short investigation I wanted to point out how a certain idea was expressed in the film and in the movie and how different or similar the main characters are. I find out that the character of George Milton was played in accordance with the original story while Lennie in Sinise's version had some inconsistency.
Anyway, to my mind, any incarnations of book, or any new versions of a story, or interpretations of characters, will always have differences and similarities in comparison with their originals. This will always happen due to many factors (individual views, contemporary trends in art, freedom of creativeness, etc. ) which are constructive and functioning in the frame of art. Bibliography Brussat Frederic. Movie Review. Spirituality and Health. Oct 11 2005, Oct. 12, 2005 at web John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, Penguin Classics, February 1, 1994, P. 104 Stanley Kauffmann.
Review on Of Mice and Men. The New Republic, November 2, 1992, pp. 24 - 25
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Research essay sample on Of Mice And Men Film Book Contrast
