I don't have a whole lot to say at the moment, but the film we watched last night, Alice (unofficial trailer) by Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, got me thinking about a subject we discussed a while ago, namely the liberties filmmakers take when adapting either another work of fiction or historical events to film. The film begins by saying it's "inspired by" Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and in many regards it follows it—the White Rabbit running late, Alice growing and shrinking, tea with the Mad Hatter, flamingo croquet with the Queen of Hearts—but in many respects deviates from it, not only in its events but in its overall tone and mood, to the point that it's clear that Svankmajer felt no need to follow the source material when he didn't want to, presumably based on his own artistic choices and sensibilities. Alice is aesthetically much darker than Carroll's novel, and whereas much of the novel's appeal comes from its wordplay, the film is almost silent, and what dialogue there is is often repetitive. Svankmajer may have used Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a jumping-off point, but he was obviously making his own film, not just adapting Carroll's novel.
This seems somewhat different from what we were discussing earlier, though, since that was about adapting historical events rather than existing fiction. While I generally think that filmmakers should tread carefully in the former case (e.g., Che, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Battleship Potemkin), I don't necessarily think the same holds true for the latter. Whereas an historical adaptation has no clear, "canonical" text on which it's based and to which it can be compared for accuracy—even first-hand accounts aren't ironclad—an adaptation of fiction does have such a text—the original work of fiction—and so doesn't carry the same burden. I guess that's why I have no problem with the fact that Alice deviates greatly from its source material; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is still there for anyone to refer to, so I think that Svankmajer, Tim Burton, Walt Disney, or anyone else doesn't bear the same responsibility (for lack of a better word) and is free to deviate from it however he sees fit.
So do you think that distinction is legitimate, between historical adaptations and fictional adaptations? Or do you think a film like Alice should stick more closely to its source material? That an adapter like Svankmajer owes something to the work he's adapting? Thoughts, feelings, reactions?
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