bene_legionary
Searching for the daguerrotype of God
After finishing the Martin Beck stories, I have been scoping out the movies and the TV series that developed from these books... I watched The Man on the Roof the other day – it was just on Youtube, with English subtitles – which was developed from The Abominable Man. Faithful adaptation, although the description of the characters are wildly different to the actors' features – Kollberg should have been portly, and Martin Beck himself seems to show his age whilst in the books he's meant to be actually young-looking if not constantly and melancholically middle-aged.
They still did a good enough job – I wonder, though, if the ending could have been changed to suit an ending of a movie, rather than of the book. Martin Beck gets shot at the end of the book but we know he's coming back in the next one, so it's fine for him narratively... in the movie he just gets shot and then there's nothing else. It's not part of a series, so it just looks as if Beck gets shot for nothing. And since the movie was faithful, in both instances the shot occurred because of a mistake on the part of the police. It just looks more futile in the movie, we don't know what happens to Beck after the events of it. Cool helicopter scene though.
Interestingly Kollberg is absent from the Beck TV series, which has been running since the late 90s. I understand why he's not around, though, since he works so well with Martin that he'd probably make too things easy. I wonder how they'll do Gunvald Larsson, though, since now he's supposed to be Beck's right-hand man, and in the books they really really really don't get along well until late in the series, when they notice that they're the last of a dying breed of honourable (if not always equitable nor noble) policemen.
They still did a good enough job – I wonder, though, if the ending could have been changed to suit an ending of a movie, rather than of the book. Martin Beck gets shot at the end of the book but we know he's coming back in the next one, so it's fine for him narratively... in the movie he just gets shot and then there's nothing else. It's not part of a series, so it just looks as if Beck gets shot for nothing. And since the movie was faithful, in both instances the shot occurred because of a mistake on the part of the police. It just looks more futile in the movie, we don't know what happens to Beck after the events of it. Cool helicopter scene though.
Interestingly Kollberg is absent from the Beck TV series, which has been running since the late 90s. I understand why he's not around, though, since he works so well with Martin that he'd probably make too things easy. I wonder how they'll do Gunvald Larsson, though, since now he's supposed to be Beck's right-hand man, and in the books they really really really don't get along well until late in the series, when they notice that they're the last of a dying breed of honourable (if not always equitable nor noble) policemen.
), but here's what I've watched since the last time I posted:
