Walden Media has announced that they’re going to be creating a film version of C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters. Now, this is a very interesting idea, as my friends and I have talked about. You see, this book could be filmed in many many different ways. Give this book to Steven Spielberg, and his film will be different from Darren Arnofsky’s film. Give it to Peter Jackson, and it’ll be different from Hayao Miyazaki’s. It seems that there is almost an infinite number of directions that a director/writer could take. It could even be a director’s series, like a mini-series of short stories, all told by different directors. Not only that, but Lewis points out that the book isn’t necessarily in chronological order, so each could start and end anywhere. It is, afterall, a collection of letters.
The only question is, who will the filmmakers be that tell us this story, and will it fulfill our own imaginations? I don’t believe that any one film based on this book could be accurate to our own vision of it. I also believe that when you read it in life also has an effect on how you interpret it. Sure the ideas are always going to be the same, but for every person, some things weigh more heavily than others. It gives great insight into ourselves, and no one film could cover everyone.
Either way, I’m definitely looking forward to the film version that we’re going to have. It should be an interesting film. Let’s hope that it can capture the spirit of the novel in a personal way.
The film is planned for a 2008 release.