Fiction to Films

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/NewsDetail.aspx?storyid=6888&date=2016-03-06&pageid=1

                                                            Fiction to Films

One of the activities in my book-reading sessions is comparative study of the book and the film, if the piece of literature has been adapted into a movie.  A book once read cannot be disregarded altogether.  Even if it has triggered and evoked a strong contrarian reaction, it lingers on and is reflected upon, analysed, criticized and then maybe adapted into a film. Watching a film version of your favourite book is in a manner interesting – the process of visualization of that which existed in words and was imagined in multiple ways.  What the filmmaker left out or rather enhanced, how much did the story or visuals deviate or was followed ditto, using the same dialogue and vocabulary, as the book.

The Oscars 2016 still fresh in our minds had nine movie nominations which were adapted or inspired by books. Out of these, five were shortlisted as adapted screenplays viz. Carol, The Big Short Story, The Martian, Room and Brooklyn. The others include Steve Jobs inspired by the biography written by Walter Issacson, The Revenant by Michael Punke and the Danish Girl with Eddie Redmayne, based on the novel by David Ebershoff. The Embrace of the Serpent, a Columbian film shortlisted in the Foreign Language Film category( we watched it at IFFI) was based on handwritten diaries by two scientists –Theodore Koch Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes who spent 40 years working with tribals and Shamans, absorbed in their fieldwork along the river Amazon searching for a sacred  healing plant. 

Carol is based on a novel ‘The Price of Salt’ written by Patricia Highsmith in the 50s. The writer known for her psychological thrillers had more than two dozen film adaptations of her books. ‘Strangers on a Train’ written in 1950 enjoyed a mediocre success in the publishing world. It was only when the undisputed master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock adapted it into a film that it was noticed and became a success. ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ is another much known film based on one of her 22 novels in the Tom Ripley series.  It is interesting to note how the film showed sly Ripley (young Matt Damon) meeting his nemesis in the end whereas the book lets him go scot free.

The ‘Room’ written by Emma Donoghue was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2010, and it won many other international awards, too. The story is relayed by a five year old boy Jack (Jacob Tremblay in the film,who appeared on the Oscars night at Dolby’s attired in a tuxedo)  held captive in a small room along with his mother. The experience is based somewhat on the hearing in 2008 of the Fritzi Case in a small town in Austria. Brie Larson, who played the part of the mother and the kidnapped victim, won the Oscar for the Best Actress this year.

Jack refers to the 100 sq ft area as The Room - another living being.  Emma capitalizes significant nouns used by the boy in the book (Rug, Bed, Wall) to emphasize his world made up of immense possibilities contrary to the restrictiveness and claustrophobia of the confined room and a traumatized mother. The triumph of the book is the voice of the five year old, an engaging pervasive sound that anchors the reader and artistically liberates the otherwise numbing story.

Colm Toibin, the Irish writer of the fame of ‘The Testament of Mary’, talks of his marvellous experience of seeing his book come alive on screen.  He says that he has watched the film six times and is very surprised and bemused by the transformation of this small idea he had in a delicate space in his mind; an idea which could have just been a novella but acquired a life of its own and went from being a book to a solid movie. The very morphing of the visuals on screen (He denies having played any part in the screenplay except a couple of appearances on the sets) took him on a different journey with his own book; an interesting intriguing feel to the whole phenomenon.

Books and films have existed together for more than a century now and have entered into a symbiotic relationship of ideas and forms. Creativity stems from books and filmwallahs are inspired to make frames of the storyline of a book and project it visually in motion pictures. It is like affirming and coalescing the imagination when reading the book and saying, “This is how it would appear in real life”.

Proponents of books swear by the writings of the authors and want to be left to their flights of imagination, rather than concretizing them to black and white details as shown in films. Others sit glued to visual screens, as it saves them time and effort of reading print. The sparring factions will continue on both sides, but Colm’s take on the book – film adaptation story- brings a fresh perspective to the entire process.

A film adaptation can be as pleasurable as reading or writing a book. The loud iteration of an avid reader – ‘A book is always better than its film’ or ‘Film spoils the book for its readers’ –becomes feeble and loses force when seen in this light.  Going by Colm’s ‘bemused’ utterances, the two genres entwine and enrich each other and can aspire to reach the same heights, making it a fabulous wholesome experience for the reader, who can enjoy it equally or more so in two different ways.

The jury rests here!