literature will always be more powerful than film for the simple premise that one cannot interpret and study images like he/she can words. Thousands of people may have different interpretations regarding, say, passages from the Book of Mark or Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, but watching the Passion of the Christ or Apocalypse Now just solidifies Mel Gibson or Coppola's own interpretations, making them tangible for the audience to see, but in doing so, filtering down the true beauty and genius that words bring to anyone's mind who is reading them.
Even Stanley Kubrick couldn't bring to life the sheer genius that is A Clockwork Orange. Granted, he only read the American version, which featured 20 of the 21 original chapters, but the beauty of Burgess's Nadsat is lost among the visual flair.
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