Some books should never be made into movies

Italian filmmaker Fellini once said "All movies are autobiographical." So, by this logic, it could be argued that Oppenheimer is about Christopher Nolan and his preoccupations, not Oppenheimer's. Is this over-simplifying? Well, I agree with Fellini.

Look at it this way: there are books that could have made good movies, once upon a time. But, not anymore. It's not that movies have changed; rather it's the culture at large that has changed. This is just the inevitable decline of an art form and a certain Western male point of view. Linear storytelling (which novels and movies excel at) are mostly written from the point of view of one character, historically a White male. As a result, movies today don't resonate the way they used to, and that's not just because I'm older and harder to please. Just look at the research. Movies don't resonate because they can no longer deliver in a world where multiple points of view now co-exist.

Case in point: there will never be a movie of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind, which he published in 2001 as La sombra del viento (the excellent English translation was in 2004). Around the world Zafón is said to be the most widely published contemporary Spanish writer. The novel uses a dreamlike plot-line through different decades, with Gothic settings, superb dialog and clearly drawn characters, and the marvelously evocative Cemetery of Forgotten Books. It is written from the 1st person point of view of a young man, Daniel Sempere, in 1945. It might have been possible for a (male) European director like Fellini or Carlos Saura to have made this into a movie circa 1975 because that's the vibe I get from reading the novel. But, that vibe belongs to a middle aged sophisticated European intellectual and world weary novelist like Zafón, not an idealistic young man like Daniel Sempere.

Before he died of cancer in 2020, Zafón realized (correctly) that any new movie would butcher the novel and he (and his estate) have ruled out there ever being one. I think what he was getting at was that contemporary movies completely fail to capture the vibe of earlier times - because they cannot do it anymore. It's often said that movies set in the past are always about the present. Books too... But it's easier to get to the imaginary past with a novel.

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. 
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

The age and gender and class of fictional characters can be changed so as to switch point of view, or (riskier) to have multiple points of view, but our own identities as readers and viewers also shape whether we like a movie (or TV show) or novel. Take age: movies that I loved in my Twenties - like Fellini's - seem disappointing to me decades later. I know this is a common reaction on Reddit and Goodreads when people revisit movies, TV shows and books. Movies like La Dolce Vita offer an illusory time travel, but that's all they offer. You won't find Anita Ekberg or Marcello Mastroianni in the Trevi Fountain these days. The past is gone.

I was once told: "It's not your job to decide if you or dislike a movie; your job is to find who does like it and get them to watch it." True that.