The Effectiveness of the Opening Scenes of Gary Sinise's Film Of Mice and Men in Comparison to Steinbeck's Novel

The Effectiveness of the Opening Scenes of Gary Sinise's Film Of Mice and Men in Comparison to Steinbeck's Novel

Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men is a hard-hitting and powerful novel

about 1930s America, in California. Steinbeck's intention in the book

Of Mice and Men was to show that American society was damaged in this

time and also in those days people had a lot of hopes and dreams but

the wouldn't exist because people were too disaffected and selfish: '

nobody never gets to heaven and nobody never gets no land.'

Sinise's film was made in 1992 with the two most important characters

of the film; Gary Sinise as George and John Malkovich as Lennie. In

general the film was good although it missed out some important

features, which changes the meaning of the story. In this essay I am

going to evaluate the effectiveness of the opening of the film in

comparison with the impact of the novel.

The opening of the novel shows utopian natural life reminiscent of the

Garden of Eden. There are many adjectives are used at the beginning of

the novel to convey a feeling of lively, fresh and vibrant life:

'warm…deep and green, yellow sands …sunlight …golden…' with natural

things always lasting forever: 'Strong and rocky…fresh and green with

every spring. Spring suggests rebirth and renewal. At the start of the

book Steinbeck is saying that nature is alive and will last forever.

This is set up to compare to the lives of George and Lennie and all

the other men who work on ranches across California. Also, all this

shows harmony and the harmony includes animals: 'deer', 'dogs',

''coons', 'rabbits' who all 'come to drink in the dark'. They do...

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...the same way as

we might in the film.

When they get to Soledad we the mise en scene changes to show lots of

people in a town. This is where are George and Lennie are going to

collect their work permits. At one point a mother and child walk past

and there are many examples of working people coming and going. This

is different to the novel and not match the way the book shows the

disharmony of human beings.

I think that the opening of the film was not as good as the opening of

the novel because the novel shows how life in California is made and

it also wants to surprise in terms of what is going to happen in the

novel. Steinbeck wrote the novel to show that in the 1930s people were

very selfish and that economics drove people to self-destruction. In

my opinion the film does not show this and so is less effective.