Culture August 8, 2012

The first rule is that there are no rules. Anything I might say about or against the derivation of movies from great works of literature is gainsaid by what’s at the top of my all-time-top-ten list, the adaptation of King Lear, by Jean-Luc Godard (and, high on the list that follows it, of younger filmmakers’ greats, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz). And, of course, some of the very best filmmakers, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, have made a lifetime’s work of literary adaptation. That said, the practice—which has burst into the headlines again with the news that Baz Luhrmann’s take