A Study of the Cinematic Adaptation of The Other One's Dad Novel Based on Genette's Concept of Hypertext

Adaptation is a kind of interpretability of art or a way to be influenced by it in which the artist recreates a new work of art by interpreting another work or following it; in this case traces of the previous works can be seen. Comparative studies of adaptation is a branch of comparative literature that deals with the relations between the two media. Adaptation has a special place in cinema and most of the prominent works in the history of cinema have been adaptations of literary works. The importance of plot and storyline was evident from the first films made and shown by the Lumiere brothers. This research studies the adaptation in cinema using Gerard Genette's theory of hypertext and tries to scrutinize the issue of communication and interaction between two popular media, namely literature and cinema, by examining a recent example of contemporary Iranian cinema and literature. Yadollah Samadi's "Father of the Other" is an adaptation of a novel of the same name written by Parinoush Sanei in the field of fiction with a psychological and educational approach. This study, while drawing upon the theoretical framework of Gerard Genette's views, deals with quantitative and pragmatic changes in the intertextual interaction between the book and the film. The study and categorization of various applied (in terms of motivations, values and visual representation) and quantitative changes (addition of events and characters decreasing or increasing the narrative) shows that the film has facilitated the comprehension of the main work and has been able to establish itself as an independent work by interacting with the original text through eliminating the flaws . In other words, the series of events that were not justified in the chain of cause and effect or were not in line with the plot's progress were logically removed in the film. The most considerable transformation of the film is related to the value and motivational transformations, which is through the change of the mother's outlook and worldview towards her personal and family life and the removal of those moral characteristics of the father's character that are  not in harmony with the film's atmosphere. In conclusion, it can be said that the film is a faithful adaptation of the novel, with the difference that it has proved more sucessful than the book in terms of characterization.