Erik Hoel's "The Revelations," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Revelations: A Novel by Erik Hoel.

The entry begins:

Whenever thinking about an adaption of a book, it’s worth thinking about how films and novels are different. Novels are the closest medium to consciousness, and the ability to see through someone’s eyes, to root around the cabinet of their thoughts, is impossible to truly mimic with a movie. At the same time, films have their own special abilities. Everything from the beauty of acting to visual effects to establishing atmosphere through cinematography, all are things that novels can’t do. So I’d want an adaptation of my own book that uses the medium of film to emphasize the aspects of the story that a film does better than a novel, since otherwise, what’s the point?

By definition then I wouldn’t want a perfect adaption. The Revelations takes place in New York City, and follows a group of young neuroscientists who are trying to unravel the scientific mystery of consciousness. When one dies under mysterious circumstances, the others form an amateur investigation into the death. Eventually the mystery of the murder begins to entwine with the mystery of consciousness itself.

There are aspects of the book that wouldn’t work on screen. Each chapter is a subsequent day, for instance, and I don’t think it’d be a good idea to blindly mimic that. But other things do translate. In the novel New York City is treated like its own character, almost with its own consciousness. I think one could get this sort of panpsychism across with a camera; it’d be difficult, but not impossible.

Given this ultimate concern, I really only have a choice of director: Alex...[read on]

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My Book, The Movie: The Revelations.

--Marshal Zeringue