Adapting "Pale Fire"

Reading “Pale Fire” bookended by two novels that have very distinct filmic adaptations, including the infamously “unfilmable” Tristram Shandy got me to wondering what a cinematic adaptation of “Pale Fire” might look like.

            How would you capture some of the purely literary aspects of the text in a visual medium? Most importantly, how would you convey the text of the poem in the film, and how would you make that fit with the rather linear narrative Kinbote is telling in his commentary? What Nabakov is getting at doesn’t seem like it would be well served by the Shandy technique of making a film about attempting to adapt the novel.

            First off, it’s important to get the director right, as they will be crucial in translating the ambiguous tone of the novel to the screen. We need a director who is more comfortable with questions than answers (so that with the film, we can present a product that allows us to wonder in the same way we do with the novel if Shade and Kinbote are two halves of one author, who is sane in these proceedings, and what is actually true). This job seems ideal for Christopher Nolan or David Fincher. With Inception and The Prestige, Nolan has already proved that he’s comfortable with intricate storytelling and narratives that stack on top of each other like Russian dolls. Furthermore, he shows a real interest in ambiguity and questions of split personality and authorial power/control/intent. Fincher, who rose to fame with Fight Club, shows a similar flare for mind-bending storytelling featuring characters with multiple personalities. One of these two men could bring something unique to a potential adaptation of “Pale Fire.”

            Now, to the adaptation itself – it should aim to mostly tell a linear story, but within a frame narrative of Kinbote in his cottage writing the commentary. The film would open on Kinbote in his hideaway near the amusement park scribbling furiously – it could feature a narrative akin to the opening VO of film noir and detective films. Thus, we could establish this narrative VO feature so that Kinbote’s voice can interject in the linear story from time to time. With this narrative framework, we merge the foreword and the commentary into one with a glimpse into Kinbote’s life in the cottage and him beginning to tell the tale of how he got there. It is important that we keep Kinbote as the unreliable narrator and Shade as a character within Kinbote’s story.

However, how do tell both Shade and Kinbote’s stories that unfold prior to their convergence in New Wye? One option is to start with Shade and Kinbote’s first meeting in New Wye (or perhaps a bit before with Kinbote’s arrival in New Wye) – from there, all story that happens in Zembla or New Wye pre-Kinbote will take place in flashbacks within this longer flashback. This will allow the film to maintain the novel’s ability to tell an overarching linear story while jumping backwards and forwards in time. Many of the story details of the poem that are elaborated on in the commentary, i.e. Hazel Shade’s suicide and the aftermath of Shade’s heart attack, could be absorbed into this flashback convention.

Finally, there is the question of the poem – there are two ways to address this – either small sections of the poem could be read by Kinbote and Shade throughout the film to interweave the poetry with aspects of the storytelling as the commentary forces the poem to do. Or, more practically, the entire poem could be read/narrated in a lyrical dream sequence that takes place at a moment in the film when Shade is either reviewing his work or Kinbote is reading the poem for the first time. Or, perhaps, to take an entirely different tact, Shade was not writing a poem, but creating a short film and that is what we see. There are many options here for making this fit within a visual medium.

Most likely, for the film to work, you would have to determine whether Kinbote is a real person and a madman or a figment of Shade’s imagination (or vice versa). The film does not need to answer this definitively, but it should probably take some twists and turns to at least suggest these possibilities (and casting and other visual cues can help this).

The film can conclude as it started, back in Kinbote’s cottage, with the beautiful closing narration Nabakov has provided. Visually though, it must close with a glimmer of an answer or a shock of ambiguity to suggest these theories that drive the bulk of scholarship surrounding “Pale Fire.” The trickiest aspect of adapting this novel is to maintain the sense of an untrustworthy narrator in a way that forces you to consider the self-reflexive nature of storytelling itself.