Seeing is Believing

To my mind the optimum approach for this story would have been to alternate the prose of the novel with the video from the movie, because each brings its own special qualities.

Vivid though words can be, they are often no match for the stark reality of seeing something surprising or disturbing with your own eyes. Our abiding memories of epochal events in the real world (the Kennedy assassinationΦ, the Challenger disasterΦ, 9/11Φ) are visual. In fiction too, words can make you feel afraid – very afraid – but they cannot make you literally jump out of your seat.

Yet, while film has matured over the last century into a sophisticated narrative medium, words continue to provide an unrivalled way of exploring the meanings and implications of things. In this sense the two are complementary. For real events we may turn to television to see what has happened, but we rely on articles and essays to understand it.

So too in fiction. Text is unmatched in its ability to explore people's inner lives, and to tell stories from the unique 'free indirect' perspectiveΦ that has been perfected by novelists over the last couple of hundred years. It is also uniquely powerful in its ability to convey metaphor. For these reasons I find it hard to imagine a film version of José Saramago's dystopian BlindnessΦ achieving the anything like same psychological effects as the novel (and in fact the movieΦ fails on this count).

But for an example where video shines – even without access to Hollywood's infinite resources – look no further than Metalosis MalignaΦ, a no-budget pseudo-documentary made by Dutch art student Floris Kaayk. In an eerily deadpan tone, it tells of a fictional disease in which metal surgical implants turn on their recipients, with gruesome results. To my mind, prose descriptions could not have created the same suspension of disbelief, or the same persisting and unsettling shock, that a sight of the symptoms induces.

So once again, think before you turn the page...