The old chestnut: film vs. book
As book into film adaptations go, this is one of the better ones I've seen and it's certainly as refreshing as it is unusual to see a film whose director chooses to treat their audience as intelligent, thinking beings. The real problem is that, as a medium, film, while it can certainly be poetic, just isn't able to capture the sheer lyrical beauty of a novel like Orlando. There were many things in the film which impressed - and even moved - me; but there was nothing which even approached the soaring, heart-breaking beauty of the novels closing paragraphs when Orlando is standing under the old oak tree on the moonlit hill above his/her ancestral home. '....there sprang up over his head a single wild bird. "It is the goose!" Orlando cried. "The wild goose...."' I'm moved to tears every time I read it.
"That, - Captain Bligh, - that is the thing; - I am in hell, sir - I am in hell."