Finding A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Author's Note: In this piece, I wrote a similarities and differences essay that would compare the short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," with the short film with the same title.

Nothing can be exactly replicated; it's impossible. No toy, painting, or dance move is interpreted in the same way and simply cannot be duplicated the exact way it was thought of. Similarly, the short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and the short movie with the same title, are just the same way; you cannot make it exactly the same, and that is where I am finding the difference and similarities.

When you are watching a movie, you don't pay any attention to the camera angle unless it is a horror movie and you are waiting for something to be hiding behind the camera, or something like that. With this short film, I really noticed that the camera angle was dead-on pointing at the people that were being displayed in the scene. That is not how I envisioned it as I read the story. I don't know if that was possibly supposed to be like that, but it was just one thing that I would've considered changing to give the scenes more character and texture.

One thing that I thought they displayed very well, was how the characters had gruff in their voices and you could tell that they were angry by the way that they carried themselves. Clomping feet, lagging voice, and sitting in a hunched position compared to sitting up-right, looking at the old man, and tears slowly falling down his cheek. You could just really tell that they were feeling two totally different emotions, and that really stood out to me. You can also tell that they put lots of emotion into it as well.

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," the movie and the short story, had things in them that I would've thought of different and carefully picked out, and a something that they did really well, too. Though things cannot be perfectly replicated, I thought that the short story to the movie did a pretty good job making it very close to what the story was written by Ernest Hemingway.