We shall deal with three novels and their film adaptations.
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), one of the most controversial novels ever written, has much more to offer than the topic of pedophilia: an innovative style, an unreliable narrator, sub-themes ranging from “the double” to “American pop-culture”… We will try to find out what happens to these things are mirrored in Kubrick’s 1962 and Lyne’s 1997 movies.
Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1998) received a PEN award and a Pulitzer Prize; its 2002 movie version by Daldry was awarded an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Unusual is the popular success of so challenging a work: three interwoven plot lines (Virginia Woolf, a 1950s housewife, a 1990s lesbian) are used to deal with questions of time and fiction, love and death, madness and sexuality.
Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001) deals with guilt and death, childhood secrets and adult tragedies. The 2007 film adaptation directed by Joe Wright won an Oscar and wide-ranging critical acclaim. But can a movie deal with the question of fictionality?
Some sessions (those when we watch the movies) will take three hours; the seminar still counts as 2 SWS. After all, great movies are fun. |
