Philip Hensher reminds us of literature's advantages over film,
with Bleak House as case in point:
"It isn't, moreover, just a question of leaving out wonderful
little corners of plot, or irresistible characters. It's really a matter of not
doing a tenth of the things a book does. A book can switch into historical
narration, dense description, authorial comment. It can, as Bleak House does, alternate between past
tense and present tense–it's an extraordinarily sinister moment when Richard
suddenly disappears from Esther's narrative, and appears in an anonymous
present-tense section. A film can't do any of this; it is stuck, forever, in
the most banal of a novel's modes, the narration of action and the
transcription of dialogue."
