BOOK v MOVIE: What's different?
Here are all the biggest differences between the book & the film (SPOILERS): http://screenprism.com/insights/article/how-closely-does-the-family-fang-match-the-book
shareOn the other hand, the film arguably could have benefited from a slightly larger-than-life, exaggerated visual world to match the feel of the book. In one of the book's promoted reviews on Amazon, author Hannah Pittard calls the novel "The Royal Tenenbaums meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and a "total blast.” A touch of Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums-style visual storytelling might have made the movie more of a blast. A story about the surreally talented and strange Fangs calls for a more stylized filmic language. Bateman has gone instead in the other direction: the naturalistic, subdued camera of realism and intimate, personal dramas. While this style is more popular in today’s landscape, the realist camera denotes feelings of seriousness, lifelike representation and emotional weight. (Perhaps this is where the Virginia Woolf half of the story comes in.) Still, while the book is awash in dark familial tension, its absurd hilarity might have been better expressed by a colorful, imaginative visual world instead of this less fanciful, ultimately somber approach. Nonetheless, how well the tones match is a matter of opinion and highly open to debate.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. The script was pining for visual oomph. Wes Anderson would have done a far better job.
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Exactly! That's how I felt, too. I'd love to see Wes Anderson's version of this book.
shareReally? I haven't read the book so maybe it paints a different picture, but this seems to go totally opposite of what the art was about - the art was happening in the moment, it was real not staged or faked or glamorized. It wasn't a dead mirror but what really happened in the moment.
It would seem to me that Bateman was true to the source material. Imho the art movies worked quite nice.
Overall it's definitely pretty true to the material and does a good job. But you could definitely imagine ways that visually he could have brought the tone of the book out better
share"Running With Scissors" attempted the forementioned and didn't work. And I wouldn't say The Royal Tenenbaums was that much better a film either, personally.
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