Hemingway

"A Clean Well-Lighted Place"

Books and movies. They are pretty much opposites. Sometimes though, if you making a movie out of a book, it can turn out very similar. However, with the book and movie called "A Clean Well-Lighted Place," they really weren't that similar at all. Some of the most important parts of the book, in my opinion, were sadly left out of the movie.

In the very beginning of the movie, it starts off with an old man sitting in a booth with no windows around him. It probably sounds like no big deal that there was no windows around him, but in the book, it symbolizes something huge. There was a tree outside the window the man was sitting next to and the tree left shadows of the leaves on the old man. That symbolized darkness and almost like how he was trying to escape from it and he wasn't totally covered in darkness. It was probably the most important part of the book.

Now, not so much on the importance level, but on just what I was picturing level, the cafe. I pictured it being very small and kind of rustic looking. I pictured the tables to be little circular ones and the walls to be covered in old paintings. Instead, the tables were big and they pretty much looked like desks. The cafe was very modern and even had a TV on the wall. Not what I pictured at all.

So yes, books and movies can be very similar, or they can barely be recognized as the same thing. I think that they should have done a much better job portraying light and dark and they should have made it much more old looking a not so modern. It would have made the movie, much better.