Rant

Author's Note: This is a short response to "A Clean, Well-lighted Place" by Hemmingway.  You could consider this piece a "rant" of sorts.

Almost everyone can agree that once you read a short story or a novel, you crave a filmed version of the text.  More often than not, the film adaptation is not what you want it to be; it lacks details and overall, it will never be as good as how you pictures it in your head.  Unfortunately, “A Clean, Well-lighted Place” falls into that sort.  When I first read the story, even though I wasn’t 100% certain what the point of the story was, I had a picture in my mind.  The picture in my mind was not even close to the film adaptation.
 
In the story, it says, “…everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light…”.  That exact saying makes me picture an old diner with uncomfortable plastic booths.  I see the old man sitting in the corner booth, facing away from the rest of the diner, and just the old man minding his own business while in the shadows.  The film makers thought differently.  The whole first part of the film is in complete light.  The old man is not sitting in the shadows, he is facing the restaurant, and just in general, he sticks out like a sore thumb.  Not in the meaningful way, either.  It just looks like the man was photo shopped into the frame.  That was the biggest “beef” I had with the film, but in general, it was not at all what I thought it would be.  Very disappointing.