Nancy Tart: Writing for Life

June 16, 2018

Biblical Film Adaptations

In this world, the entertainment industry often gets inspiration or ideas from books to transform into movies.  Of course, as a writer, I like to point out to the girls that every movie started as the written word (aka written or typed scripts).  One of the areas we discuss a lot is the differences between book and movie.  We watch many films which are based on a Biblical story.  Many times when people discuss Biblically-inspired movies, the main question is: “Is it accurate?”  This is an important question.  I also like to discuss why it wasn’t accurate – because I have yet to watch a retold Biblical-story-based film that was 100% accurate.

Below are a few of my thoughts specifically on Bible-to-Movie productions.

By far a favorite series in our house is the “Greatest Adventure” cartoons; stories that are close to accurate but obviously not due to the addition of three non-biblical characters and humorous exploits by said characters that just aren’t accurate.  Another favorite is “The Ten Commandments” – which although it’s a classic with great acting and brilliant pageantry, it focuses the majority of time on the portions of Moses’ life that the Bible does not cover, and omits or changes portions of the wilderness journey.  Even the more Biblically accurate “Moses” and “Joseph,” both with Ben Kingsley, omit quite a bit of the story.  Then there are the cartoon features like “Prince of Egypt” and “King of Dreams” – which are more about the lead character “finding themselves” and “fulfilling their destiny” which sounds more along the line of Star Wars than the Bible and they outright change the stories; the former appears to be all about “freedom” (good, but what about learning to obey God?) and the latter has less obvious inaccuracies with the poignant story of forgiveness extremely strong.  Mel Gibson’s “Passion”, while being graphic and realistic where you feel like an intruder through time due to the archaic languages used, has several added sequences that aren’t in the Gospels along with omitting sections that are.  “The Nativity Story” expands on just a few verses to create a realistic emotional journey that focuses on what the storytellers believe Mary and Joseph were feeling and experiencing in their culture; it is close to being Biblically accurate, but much is added into the story.  “Noah” was realistic as entertainment but flawed if one tried to match it to the Bible (though this was the first of any Noah story remake I’d seen where they’d included the fact that Methuselah died the same year as the flood).  “Samson” has an over-the-top villain that makes it seem cartoonish, the story is again modified, yet the film storyline is highly believable.  Three or four Noah remakes as musical cartoon shorts exist in our collection and provide many laughs – the only accuracy in those is this single story thread;“Noah and his family and the animals were saved by God in a boat,” the rest is singing, dancing, and cartoon animal gags.

Even our family’s absolute favorite because it captures the truth of the character of Christ as the Gospels portray, “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” leaves much to be desired if it were an exact retelling of the story (the girls always laugh at the poor cowboy Centurion but love the emotions in the face of the actor playing Jesus when he says “I am the resurrection and the life”).

The question begging is this: why are these things left out?  Why are stories shortened?  Why are portions added in?  Why create inaccuracies in a Biblical story?

In any film production there is the balance between budget, story, perceived audience retention, rating, and other factors that impact how the finished product turns out.  For the sake of the story, characters are sometimes added, omitted, or changed.  Consider in “Samson” how instead of foreskins he brings clothing (that was a nice change).  Sometimes stories are changed or details omitted to keep a film under a specific rating and therefore open to a larger audience.  When we realize that any retelling of the Biblical story will fall short of being the actual Bible, we can appreciate the retold stories as just that; someone’s retold story based on a truth from the Bible.  Granted, as with any film or story, we have to use our discretion – I don’t own a copy of “Sodom and Gomorrah” with Stewart Granger because it’s inaccuracies outweigh what I would consider worth the entertainment (really, hundreds of people escape those cities to follow the great leader, Lot?)

Sometimes accuracy is lost in retelling a story for a specific reason to craft a more palatable story or to engage a specific audience.  I’ve rewritten a few Biblical stories and no, they are not 100% accurate.

• In “Katy Bear’s Request,” my main character is a talking bear – seriously? This is a child’s book written as a fantasy.  No human was around to witness creation so I picked a bear to witness God making Eve.  Katy Bear is a cub because my story was written for a preschool audience.  Accuracy was lost for fantasy.
• In “Story From the Inn,” the inaccuracy comes from added details. In the Bible, there is no mention of the innkeeper’s family and no mention that Joseph and Mary are unattended when Jesus is born.  From those unspecified details, I developed the innkeeper’s daughter who sits with the midwife’s daughter to attend Mary and witnesses Jesus’ birth to retell the story to her grandchildren years later.  This inaccuracy is due to added details.
• In “The Living God,” I actually took quotes from the Bible for the characters to speak, but I added two young palace slaves to observe Daniel and who, like Darius, is convinced Daniel’s God is the Living God. Caleb and Miriam were added because I wanted someone with whom my audience could relate.  They are not mentioned in the Biblical account, so those additions make it inaccurate.

These stories were purposefully made inaccurate to be more entertaining and to engage my audience easier.

Personally, I like to use all Biblical films as catalysts to open discussion regarding this very truth – films are simply stories retold to entertain us.  We discuss the differences between the film and the true story, the supposed reasons why these differences exist, and how the differences affect the story.  Many times, we enjoy a retold story even though we understand the truth is different.  We have two favorite films that are about the life of Ruth – and the girls enjoy watching and discussing both.

Discussion regarding movie versus book is something I do with every film we’ve seen where the girls have read the book.  I do like to turn any opportunity into a teaching moment.  Sometimes the reaction is, “The movie is much better,” (i.e. “The Hunger Games”, “Bambi”, “The Little Mermaid,” “The Count of Monte Cristo”) but most often the reaction is, “I missed xyz” or “Why didn’t they have such and such character?” ending with, “I liked the book better.”

With almost all Bible story depictions on film, the consensus is the Book is much better.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart