Great Adaptations: The Shawshank Redemption
A great adaptation should give you the ability to look at both the book and film in different lights after consuming each piece. There is an immediate compare and contrast. The whole notion of 'the book is always better than the movie' isn't always true. It's not common but it happens. What is even more rare is to have both the book and the adaptation of it manage to be different yet both great. Reading Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption felt like watching a fisherman cast a series of lines out to catch a fish. Here's the opening paragraph: "There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess- I'm the guy who can get it for you. Tailor-made cigarettes, a bag of reefer if you're partial to that, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your son or daughter's high school graduation, or almost anything else...within reason, that is. It wasn't always that way." The next paragraphs tell us how Red got to Shawshank.