Writing comparative reviews can be time-consuming particularly because critical analyses that compare and contrast works of art must be preformed with caution. It’s easy to mix up artistic contexts and motives only to arrive at some unsustainable conclusion. In order to write with authority, you must make sure you have a good grasp of the theoretical background of both the film and the novel. Here’s how you go about it.
Basic Research for a Comparative Review
Whether it influences your interpretation or not, giving certain basic information is compulsory. Most of it will be comprised in the introduction so as to provide the reader with a comprehensive background before proceeding to the actual analysis. It is required that names of authors and directors as well as titles of the works and years of release are mentioned in the introduction.
Argumentation in a Comparative Review
Throughout subsequent paragraphs, in order to be able to adequately explore the key themes of both, you will need to gather precise knowledge in several areas. For starters, make sure you can define the literary genre of the book in question as well as inspirations its author drew from elsewhere. The same holds for movie genre and reception of both on the part of critics. With this information noted down, you can proceed to composing the argumentative and expository part of your review.
Further reading: How to Write a Comparative Review
Compare and Contrast Essay Questions
Whatever you choose to concentrate on, some typical aspects of book-movie reviews can be formulated as the following questions:
- What is impressive and/or disappointing about the movie as compared to the novel?
- What innovations did the director introduce (more characters, changed names, cut off episodes, etc.)?
- What are the similarities as well as differences in the depictions of moral, social, and historical problems?
- What cinematic means did the director use in order to account for the visually ineffable?
- Is the movie adaptation of the novel a commentary on the book or is it more like an alternative interpretation of what was represented in the novel?
- What cinematic analogies can be found in the movie with respect to the literary means used by the writer (does music account for the atmosphere of the novel, how is the sequence of scenes related to the original plot construction, e.g.)?
- How did the director and the author, respectively, account for character psychology (is it envisioned in dialogic interactions, appearance, or any other element of characterization)?
You can concentrate your analysis on chosen questions and address them in accordance with their relevance for your thesis.
Some comparative reviews may require more research than others. For a comprehensive source of knowledge about writing about movies and novels, see the following articles:
How to Write a Response to a Movie
How to Write a Response to Literature
