Erik Hoel received his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Madison-Wisconsin. He is a research assistant professor at Tufts University and was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in the NeuroTechnology Lab, and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Hoel is a 2018 Forbes “30 under 30” for his neuroscientific research on consciousness and a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow.
Here he shares some thoughts about adapting The Revelations, his debut novel, for the screen:
Whenever thinking about an adaption of a book, it’s worth thinking about how films and novels are different. Novels are the closest medium to consciousness, and the ability to see through someone’s eyes, to root around the cabinet of their thoughts, is impossible to truly mimic with a movie. At the same time, films have their own special abilities. Everything from the beauty of acting to visual effects to establishing atmosphere through cinematography, all are things that novels can’t do. So I’d want an adaptation of my own book that uses the medium of film to emphasize the aspects of the story that a film does better than a novel, since otherwise, what’s the point?Visit Erik Hoel's website.
By definition then I wouldn’t want a perfect adaption. The Revelations takes place in New York City, and follows a group of young neuroscientists who are trying to unravel the scientific mystery of consciousness. When one dies under mysterious circumstances, the others form an amateur investigation into the death. Eventually the mystery of the murder begins to entwine with the mystery of consciousness itself.
There are aspects of the book that wouldn’t work on screen. Each chapter is a subsequent day, for instance, and I don’t think it’d be a good idea to blindly mimic that. But other things do translate. In the novel New York City is treated like its own character, almost with its own consciousness. I think one could get this sort of panpsychism across with a camera; it’d be difficult, but not impossible.
Given this ultimate concern, I really only have a choice of director: Alex Garland. He’s actually himself a novelist, writing books like The Beach and The Coma (and The Coma involves neuroscience, so I’m sure he’d geek out about the many details of the world of science in the book). His adaptation of Annihilation is a masterpiece of making appropriate changes—for example, the lighthouse scene doesn’t happen in the book where Natalie Portman is mimicked by a strange silverly dancer, like it is a cuckoo of her personality. But it’s one of the most unnerving scenes in cinema.
Finally, his recent mini-series Devs is one of the most powerful, subtle, and literary shows made since the early Golden Age shows like The Wire and Mad Men. Devs is truly a “show of ideas” and I highly recommend it. So as you can tell, I’m a fan. But that’s because I’d trust him to pick out those parts of the story that are best expressed in images rather than words, somehow renewing the narrative in a way I’d never have thought of but seems right and simple and obvious afterward. Like flipping over your pillow and finding it refreshingly cool.
--Marshal Zeringue
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