USING the medium of film should always be a conscious choice. For many, it’s a matter of convenience; films make far more money than the average book, and the business of filmmaking is large enough to tent-pole ludicrous marketing campaigns, dolls and toys, lunch-boxes and t-shirts, hats and sexy Halloween costumes. The whole machine that spins and destroys, and creates and destroys, yearns for storied content to justify its existence - otherwise we’re left with the awkward silence of the content of the purchases we make, and the nature of merchandise. That, music cannot do.

But, young as everyone once was - even the really old people - these truths are no more bothersome as bed-by-nine or a resounding ‘tough’ from a grumpy sibling. For one fourteen-year-old, enamoured by the dancing lights of film that made their way to his screen, when he sat down and read a book so outlandish, so fantastical that it continues to defy the very conventions that it established, what else could he do but dream of Dune? It was a match made in Heaven.

That boy was Dennis Villeneuve, and Heaven is still very much in the picture.

Star Trek. Star Wars. 2001. Hitchhiker’s Guide. Soylent Green. Akira. What do these cornerstones of 20th century science-fiction have in common? All were written in the shadow of Dune, which alongside Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber paved the way for critical, open-eyed science fiction that was as terrible as it was fantastical, as odd as it was familiar. Both works did well to introduce concepts into Western psyche and markets, notably the intricacies and religiosity of Arab cultures for Dune and Hindu-Buddhist cultures for Amber. The problem was, of course, that for anyone who has ever read Dune it becomes apparent just how imagination plays a key role in the appreciation of the world. Some components remain elusive, some designs are never embellished, and humanity as it is thousands years from the present shocks and awes - giant sandworms, a complicated sand-walking manoeuvre that might be more of a dance depending on who you ask, messianic prophecies that strip back at Paul’s psyche, and a voice that compels one into soulless action, each one a vivid image and each one unique to the reader. The problem of literature is exactly its strength; the evocative, hallucinogenic quality of prose becomes the struggle of visual realisation. Or, in other words, the power of words are the struggles of cinema.

Quality cannot convert from one medium to the other seamlessly - if you imagine that the story a medium tries to convey is like a dynamo, turning the hot water, boiling steam, into energy, there is always something lost in the conversion from one medium to another - it’s basic physics. What can be so clearly illustrated, personally, to a reader in Dune’s chapters relegated to a prophecy, a cinematic adaptation must convert it elsewise. The efficiency, the mastery of one medium will never be able to make another work seamlessly - stories are defined by the medium they are told, just like the idiom says: the medium is the message. When Dune posits the prophetic nature of Paul Atreides’ dreams, the visions and what they entail, they are given the benefit of deep introspection and viewership in Herbert’s prose - from the more impartial perspective that a camera automatically gives the viewer, the effect is never quite the same. But, surely, this is just the issue of linguistics - translating one form of language to another, like from French to English! Grammar and gender may be different, but you can say just about the same thing, as long as you don’t slap it in Google Translate. Well, one man - and many people, for that matter - would disagree with that assessment of cinematic linguistics. And while one man is far from an authority, this man would be Roger Ebert.

The nature of cinema, what it ought to tell, and what it is best suited to say, is a subject of tense, and many times tedious, debate. While Mr. Ebert is far from the average viewer of the picture - his role as cinema’s most famous critic still present in the minds of viewers and creators alike - his voice does offer an insight into the promise and pitfalls of adaptation. For instance, one might be shocked that for giants like Hitchcock and Kubrick (their skills with the dolly often inversely proportional to their interpersonal skills) they rarely ever, if at all, were interested in the screenplay - 2001 is based off a collaborative work between Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, although much of the material is heavily drawn from Clarke’s marvellous repertoire and he serves as the only name on the book; much the same can be said for Vertigo, which was rewritten twice before finally being shot by Hitchcock.

But all one must do to understand the failure of adaptation is read Bouileau-Narcejac’s The Living and the Dead, and watch Hitchock’s Vertigo, to find that any avid reader of the former would be immeasurably disappointed by the latter.

The works of fiction that sit astride one thread of story - the two above examples taken - are not mere sisters of blood, but entirely separate beings, as distinct as the sea and the sky, only joined by some invisible horizon and the fact that they both share the same earth, and that on good days, one clearly reflects the other. Although Vertigo’s ambitious narrative is so clearly structured from the diligent work of screenwriters, one would not dare say that what astounds about Sight and Sound’s most-lauded film is its diligent adaptation or story. It is, as any film is, the measure of its cinema. But few people are astounded by good cinema as they are by the warmth of familiarity.

Adaptations are as old as filmmaking itself; the very first films were simple recordings of theatre shows by wealthy interests that wanted to capsule the experience forever, in a way that would soon prove to be a key success of the medium. But it would not be long before experimentation with what the medium is - an audio-visual synthesis which acts as one eye for the viewer - would draw its own creations. It is a struggle that even now the modern movie musical faces, with pictures trying to play homage, while also expel the fearful truth of filmmaking - that the use of the medium is often of convenience, not choice. Many films marry the shot-reverse-shot, episodic formatting and phrases of cinematic language that become as tired as the notion of ‘a dark and stormy night’ would for a viewer, but because of what the medium offers - viewing will always require far less effort than the deep-focus of reading - these are far more forgivable. After all, the quality of picture and design has never been higher, and the democracy of modern media has allowed everyone to touch greatness, and opened the sectioned gates of art to the masses. It is not the struggle of the pedestrian viewer and the artistic reader - it is the promise of the artist and the medium she uses; the path she chooses.