Double-Takes: Intersections between Canadian Literature and Film

Filming Music: Adapting Transnational Sound in The English Patient and Fugitive Pieces

Katherine McLeod 299 Filming Music: Adapting Transnational Sound in The English Patient and Fugitive Pieces Katherine McLeod Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces are novels written through music. Music not only informs plot and characterization , but also reflects the culturally hybrid spaces inhabited by the characters .1 It is not that music becomes nation-less, but rather that music in these novels has the ability to cross over and permeate borders; hence, it represents the potential for what I am calling a transnational impulse—an impulse I would define in the lyrical terms of a desire to move across borders while, at the same time, one that acknowledges the power of these borders to limit this desire. Notably, the act of moving across relates thematically and formally to Ondaatje’s and Michaels’s novels, but also to their translations into films. The critical question, then, for director Anthony Minghella of The English Patient and director Jeremy Podeswa of Fugitive Pieces is how to translate the global significance of music into film soundtracks that are just as politically compelling . I foreground this issue at the outset because it is an issue that pertains to this essay while gesturing towards possible directions in developing a more extensive theory of adaptation through sound in Canadian literature and film studies. I argue that, through the soundtracks of The English Patient and Fugitive Pieces, we can hear adaptation taking place. What I mean by this is that we often theorize what is included or excluded in an adaptation through the visual or narrative dimensions of a film, but I ask how we can rethink this process through sound. In examining the soundtracks as such, I further argue that they exemplify a version of reader-response that calls for reading on behalf of the composer and listening on behalf of the reader. Through these multi­ faceted acts of response, the soundtracks constitute a unique medium through which to question the extent to which the films fully engage with the cultural politics of the novels. Canadian Soundtracks Filming Music 300 Directed by Anthony Minghella, The English Patient (1996) is one of the most economically successful film adaptations of Canadian literature. Among its twelve nominations at the 1997 Academy Awards, The English Patient was awarded the following honours, which I mention here due to their relevance to this article’s discussion of the adaptation of sound: Best Picture, Best Director (Anthony Minghella), Best Film Editing (Walter Murch), Best Music, Original Dramatic Score (Gabriel Yared) and Best Sound (Walter Murch, Mark Berger, David Parker and Christopher Newman). The adaptation was very much recognized as a successful adaptation in the eyes of audiences and film critics, who applauded the film as film, apart from the success of the novel. Recognizing an adaptation as a new work of art is a crucial part of Linda Hutcheon’s definition of adaptation as well as its being “an extended, deliberate , announced revisitation of a particular work” (170). Inasmuch as it is a new work of art, an adaptation relies upon audiences recognizing it as such, or, as Hutcheon states, “in the end, it is the audience who must experience adaptation as adaptation” (172). The Hollywood ‘success’ of The English Patient highlights the extent to which both the commercial soundtrack and the sound editing were recognized as works of art, or at least as artistic products that can be marketed somewhat independently of the film or novel. Although Fugitive Pieces (2007) did not achieve the same box-office success, it did premiere in North America at the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival (2008), composer Nikos Kypourgos was nominated for a Genie Award for Original Music, and it has a cast of exceptional actors and producers. Yet, even though The English Patient and Fugitive Pieces have international casts of actors, their production teams differ, as the former was international and the latter was mostly Canadian, with a Greek counterpart for the filming of the scenes in Greece. In many ways, Fugitive Pieces is a Canadian film as well as a Canadian novel since it was directed by Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa and produced by Robert Lantos. The editor for Fugitive Pieces was also a Canadian film editor, Wiebke von Carolsfeld, who has directed a feature-film adaptation of Daniel MacIvor’s play Marion Bridge (2002). I raise the issue of nationality in terms of each film’s production crew because the pressing issue in each film is...