1990: Dances with Wolves

Screenplay by Michael Blake
Adapted from the novel Dances with Wolves by Michael Blake

After being decorated for bravery during the American Civil War, Lieutenant Dunbar requests to be posted to the frontier. When he arrives at Fort Sedgewick, however, Dunbar finds his new post deserted. His only companions are his horse and a lone wolf, until he begins to encounter Native Americans. Dunbar has been warned about their vicious, savage nature, and is therefore surprised to find them intelligent and just as human as he is. Soon the lieutenant finds himself torn between two worlds: the white world he was born into as John Dunbar, and the Indian world he grows to love as Dances with Wolves.

As has been the case with pretty much all of these Oscar-winning screenplays that were written by the author of the source material (I believe this was the 13th, counting ones that the original author co-wrote with other people), both versions of Dances with Wolves are quite similar. There are, however, a few extremely significant differences. The Natives in the book are Comanches, while in the movie they're Sioux, but almost all of the details about their culture and life are exactly the same. I don't know if that's because the Comanche and Sioux tribes are in fact very similar, or if they could just find more actors who could speak the Sioux language and therefore went through and changed every reference to Comanche in the original script to Sioux, but either way it struck me as a little odd. I did appreciate that they seem to have actually found Native actors to play the Native characters, which happens so rarely in Hollywood movies, but I would be curious to hear their thoughts on the accuracy of how their culture was portrayed.

Apart from changing tribes, there aren't a lot of major alterations to the story until the very end. Beyond that, the film depicts most of the main events of the book almost exactly as they originally appeared, but not always in the same order. The most glaring example of this is the beginning. The book starts with Dunbar on his way to Fort Sedgewick, and explains the events leading up to this later. The movie shows these events in chronological order, starting with Dunbar fighting the war. This doesn't make too much difference to the story itself, and I think it works well in both versions. But then there's the end. The end of the movie is completely different from the end of the book, which just feels strange given how similar the rest of it is. Granted, the final conclusion is the same: white people continued to invade and steal all the land. But the specific destinies of Dances with Wolves and his wife, Stands with a Fist, are on very different paths when each version of the story leaves them. Personally, I much prefer the ending of the book, but that's mostly because it's a little bit happier, and the rest is so sad that I really like seeing something even slightly good come out of it.

Stay tuned for the seventh and most recent Best Adapted Screenplay winner to also win Best Picture and Best Actress: Silence of the Lambs, aka the perfect Christmas story, based on the novel by Thomas Harris.

1989: Driving Miss Daisy

Screenplay by Alfred Uhry
Adapted from the play Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry

Daisy Werthan can no longer drive, so her son, Boolie, hires Hoke Coleburn to be her chauffeur, against her will. Ultimately her need for transportation overcomes her stubbornness, and she grudgingly allows Hoke to start driving her. Despite their differences in wealth, religion, education, and race, Daisy and Hoke form a close bond that lasts for the rest of their lives.

As is generally the case when plays are adapted into films, particularly when both scripts have the same author, the differences are minimal. Almost all of the dialogue is exactly the same, although the film makes some significant additions. The most striking change was the addition of more people. The play only has three people in the cast: Daisy, Hoke, and Boolie. While the film does mostly focus on those three, and most of the added people are extras, there are two important characters who are mentioned repeatedly in the play that we actually see in the movie: Boolie's wife, Florine, and Daisy's maid, Idella. They act pretty much exactly as they're described in the play, so their addition is still very consistent with the original. Florine doesn't do much, so I don't feel like her presence really enhances the story, but Idella is a great addition. I think the story greatly benefits from having her as an intermediary between Daisy and Hoke, which she kind of is offstage in the play, but I enjoy getting to actually see her interact with them in the movie.

Apart from scenes relating to Florine and Idella, the biggest change is during the road trip scene. The movie adds two police officers who question Hoke and Daisy suspiciously for no reason. Nothing terrible comes of this, and it's a relatively brief incident, but it helps to emphasize the deep-seeded prejudice of the society, mostly against black people, but also against Jewish people. This fits in well with the rest of the story, since although bigotry isn't the main focus, it's an ever-present undertone throughout, and this addition helps further tie this together. The play doesn't give much of a feel for how the outside world viewed this unlikely couple, and the film's use of these policemen to do that helps put the story into perspective. In many ways, the world was changing very fast during the time this story was set, but in others, not nearly fast enough. And unfortunately, that can still be said today. But it's nice to have this sweet story to remind us that friendship can prevail even when surrounded and discouraged by bigotry.

At the time of blogging, this is the second most recent winner of the three awards I've blogged about: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture, and Best Actress. The most recent was two years later, but before I get to that I'll enter the 1990s with yet another Best Picture (but not Best Actress) winner to also win this award: Dances with Wolves, based on the novel by Michael Blake.

1988: Dangerous Liaisons

Screenplay by Christopher Hampton
Adapted from the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

The Marquise de Merteuil wants her friend and ex-lover, the Vicomte de Valmont, to seduce the young and innocent Cécile Volange, who is about to become engaged to a man whom the Marquise despises. The Vicomte, however, feels that Cécile is too boring of a target, and declares that he would rather focus on Madame de Tourvel, a married woman known for her strict morals. Without losing sight of her plans for Cécile, the Marquise makes a deal with the Vicomte: if he is successful in his seduction of Madame de Tourvel, the Marquise will allow him to return to her own bed.

In terms of the events of the story, the film is remarkably consistent with the novel. Naturally, some parts were simplified, and a few minor subplots were eliminated, but overall the main events were shown essentially the way they were described in the book. However, the way the story is told changed so significantly that they feel different. The novel consists entirely of letters written by various characters to each other, whereas the movie shows the characters interacting with each other. This allows readers to see different perspectives of the same event, which is particularly interesting since Valmont and Merteuil are almost always lying to everyone else except each other, and the other characters often feel the need to conceal their true thoughts to keep their dignity. The movie, showing the events themselves rather than letters after the fact, relies on the actors to convey these deceptions to the audience. Thanks to the film's stellar cast, the characters' thoughts and motivations are still quite clear without being spelled out.

However, some things are sacrificed with the elimination of the letters. For instance, the film doesn't develop Cécile or the man she loves, Danceny, very much at all compared to the book, so we feel less invested in them, which is perhaps part of the reason the movie doesn't bother to tell us what happens to them at the end. Not that I can truly blame the screenwriter for sacrificing these rather vanilla characters in favor of the far more interesting, though despicable, Vicomte and Marquise. The film mostly focuses on their relationship, which is also arguably the main focus of the book, but their whole dynamic changes significantly when they're talking face-to-face instead of writing. As far as I remember, Valmont and Merteuil never actually meet up during the whole course of the book (if they do, it's very brief), but in the movie they have several in-person conversations. While what they say is mostly very similar to what their original counterparts wrote to each other, there's a lot more back-and-forth in a real conversation than in letter correspondence, so the pacing of their conversations is a lot faster in the film. In addition, often the book put several letters from other characters in between theirs, so the reader has to wait longer to find out how they respond to each other than the viewer. I'm not sure if it's a direct result of this change in format or not, but I noticed that both of them, but particularly the Marquise, appear a lot more vulnerable and human on screen than on the page. They're still horrible, but they seem more real when they're having conversations than just writing formal letters. The movie version of the Marquise seemed to me much more clearly in love with Valmont than she is in the book, but perhaps I wasn't reading between the lines enough. Though different, I think both versions of the Marquise/Vicomte relationship are quite effective, with the one caveat that because we haven't seen them write very many letters to each other in the movie, the part at the end when the letters are revealed doesn't quite have the same effect. Otherwise, although I didn't particularly enjoy the story itself, I thought both the book and the movie told it very well.

Much to my relief, after this story about people being terrible to each other, I get to move on to a sweet story about an unlikely friendship, the sixth Best Adapted Screenplay winner to also win both Best Picture and Best Actress: Driving Miss Daisy, based on the very short play by Alfred Uhry. So stay tuned for that soon.

1987: The Last Emperor

Screenplay by Bernardo Bertolucci & Mark Peploe
Adapted from the book From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi by Pu Yi

At the age of two, Pu Yi became Emperor of China. At the age of six, he was forced to abdicate, but was still allowed to remain in the Forbidden City, surrounded by people who treated him as royalty. Thus, he grew up with all the privilege of an emperor with none of the responsibilities. As a young man, he became a puppet emperor of the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo, which he fake-ruled until the end of World War II. Later he was imprisoned and "remolded" by the Communist party, and spent the rest of his life as their poster boy.

This is one of those rare occasions when the movie is a vast improvement over the book. Generally, I'm not an advocate of films adding more drama, but the book was so incredibly lethargic that the story greatly benefited from the additions in the movie. The book is entirely chronological, but the film spices things up by starting with Pu Yi's arrest and attempted suicide (the latter of which was not recorded in the book at all), and then showing his early life in flashbacks as he reflects on it. The book forces the reader to slog through all the history, and then revisit episodes the reader barely remembers as Pu Yi at first lies to make himself look better, then tells what really happened. This makes the film much easier to follow than the book, as well as more engaging.

One of the biggest differences between the book and the film is the way the female characters are portrayed. Pu Yi barely mentions his wife and consorts in the book. The movie eliminates all but his first consort (I think he actually had four or five, it was hard to keep track), but it does turn her and the Empress into actual people with personalities. The edition of the book I read included several translator notes, which were probably the most informative part, and the translator indicated a couple of times that none of Pu Yi's marriages were consummated due to his impotence. None of this was mentioned in the book itself, but it might partly explain why he didn't seem to think the women in his life were worth talking much about. The filmmakers either didn't know about his deficiency or didn't care, because he definitely has sex in the movie. However, after his consort divorces him, he apparently stops sleeping with the empress, and she has an affair with her driver. When she becomes pregnant, Pu Yi tries to claim him as an heir, but the Japanese know who the father is and kill both the driver and the baby when it's born. The trauma of this is implied to contribute greatly to the empress's opium addiction. If any of that actually happened, it definitely wasn't in the book. She does become an opium addict, but there's no affair, no pregnancy, no murdered baby. But the story is way more interesting with all of that added.

The other major difference is the film's omission of the nauseating Communist propaganda that makes up the entire last third of the book. Over and over again, Pu Yi stresses how sure he was that the Communists were going to kill him or torture him, but instead they were kind and tried to help him become a better person. Once the Communists took over, all the poor people who had barely survived the Manchukuo-inflicted suffering were living wonderful lives, and isn't everything so wonderful for China now? In fairness, I'm sure there were people whose lives were improved by the new government, but I know a little too much about Mao's oppressive policies to share Pu Yi's reverence for him (if Pu Yi even wrote this whole book, which there seems to be some doubt about). Since the film was made by Westerners, it shouldn't be too surprising that it does not reflect the same enthusiasm for the Communist Party of China. The film portrays most of the prison guards as being angry and accusatory, which they were not at all in the book. The one warden with whom Pu Yi bonds due to his kindness and care is later shown being punished as a traitor to the Party (again, not in the book). Granted, the book was written while Mao was in power, so I don't think it would have been published without all the fawning over the Party that it does. Pu Yi was similarly enthralled by the Japanese during the Manchukuo days, until the Communists showed him how oppressive that regime had been. Sadly, it appears that no one ever showed him the same about the Mao regime. By adding the scene with the Party turning on the prison warden, the film exposes the former emperor's devotion to the new government as the naivete it was, which one only gets from the book by reading between the lines. One can't help feeling bad for Pu Yi in both versions, since he never truly got to be his own person in his whole life. The film shows him beginning to realize that, whereas in the book, he believes he has found freedom at last, failing to grasp that he has become a puppet yet again. I'm not sure which is better; both scenarios are pretty depressing.

Coming up next: Dangerous Liaisons, adapted from the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

1986: A Room with a View

Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Adapted from the novel A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Traveling in Italy, Miss Lucy Honeychurch and her chaperone/cousin, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, find themselves assigned to rooms without the view they were promised. Mr. Emerson and his son, George, have the audacity to offer to switch rooms in a rather improper manner, and thus an unconventional acquaintance is formed. When Charlotte comes upon George kissing Lucy, she whisks her cousin away. Upon her return to England, Lucy becomes engaged to the pompous and respectable Cecil Vyse, but finds it harder and harder to convince herself she's in love with him when the Emersons move nearby.

A Room with a View is everything that Out of Africa is not: the book is a relatively quick read and the film is a relatively faithful adaptation. I was delighted that most of the novel's chapter names were included on the screen, since they were pretty fun, my personal favorites being "Chapter VI: The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr Emerson, Mr George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive them" followed by "Chapter VII: They Return", as well as the many "Lying to ____" chapters. My other two favorites ("Chapter IV: Fourth Chapter" and "Chapter XII: Twelfth Chapter") were sadly absent, but we can't have everything. Including the chapter names emphasized how closely the film followed the novel. A few minor scenes were cut or altered, but on the whole the story and characters were quite consistent.  Probably the biggest change I observed was that Charlotte was more likable in the movie than in the book. That could have been partly because I find it very difficult to dislike sassy Maggie Smith, but it was mostly because the movie blatantly shows her softening significantly at the end in a way that the book only has other characters speculate about, so she's far less ambiguous on screen than on the page.

I find it rather interesting that the screenplay was written by a woman while the novel was written by a man. The story itself is rather sexist, so of course the movie is, too, but I noted that some of the book's more sexist observations were omitted from the film, though in fairness the 78-year gap between when they were written could have had just as much to do with that as the difference in sex of the writers did. The alteration of Charlotte's character could be interpreted as another way of making the story less sexist; the screenplay reveals her humanity while the book treats her as more of an obstacle. Not that I mean to disparage the book, because I did enjoy reading it, but I might have liked the movie slightly more for this reason. At any rate, it's very clear that Jhabvala actually read the novel she was adapting, but didn't feel constrained by it, which is what I'm always looking for in an adaptation. It's not my favorite book ever, but it's pretty good, and the adaptation more than did it justice, so I'd definitely call this a worthy win.

After the briefest of respites from Best Picture Winners, next up will be The Last Emperor, based on the autobiography of Pu Yi, which I believe was the 28th film to win both these awards. Contrary to what its title implies, it was far from the last to do so.

1985: Out of Africa

Screenplay by Kurt Luedtke
Adapted from the memoir Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, the book Silence Will Speak by Errol Trzebinski, and the book Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller by Judith Thurman

A Danish woman moves to Kenya to marry a Swedish baron and start a coffee farm. In her many years living there, she falls in love with the country and an Englishman, but ultimately loses them both.

Much to my surprise, I didn't find this movie quite as tedious this time as when I first watched it for my Best Picture blog. It didn't drag quite as much as I remembered. However, I must say that it is one of the worst adaptations to win this award, at least in terms of consistency with the source material. In Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen/whatever you want to call her (she went by about six different names) mostly relates anecdotes from her time on the farm, only a couple of which make it into the film. She barely mentions her husband, and while Denys Finch Hatton features fairly prominently, he's far from the main focus of the book. The movie, on the other hand, is almost entirely about her love life, and much of it isn't even accurate, to the point that I feel is almost insulting, both to her memory and to her book.

I get that the movie included her getting syphilis from her husband, even though she did not mention that in her memoir, because that had a very big impact on her life, and was included in both of the other books. But she seemed more bitter toward her husband in the movie than the books described, and most people didn't know about the nature of her illness until after her death, so in the movie when she tells Denys she had syphilis and he responds with "I know," it's kind of weird that she doesn't even question how he could possibly know that. Overall the movie spent way too much time focused on her marriage and love life in general. Her husband, Bror, also seemed a lot nastier on screen than in any of the books. And almost every detail of her relationship with her lover Denys Finch Hatton - how they met, how their relationship developed, conversations they had, even how she found out about his death - is different from how it actually happened. Possibly the thing that bothered me most about the movie was Denys calling her Karen. Pretty much nobody ever called her Karen, although that was her given name, and Denys always called her Tania. One of the biographies mentioned that it was only people who tried to pretend they knew her better than they did who referred to her as Karen, so it was kind of hard not to interpret this as a sign that the screenwriter was trying to pretend he knew enough to tell her story without actually having bothered to read it.

I know I'm probably coming across as unnecessarily harsh, but after having slogged through three rather long books about these people, I feel like I know them quite well, and this movie seems like an insult to their memory. And that goes for the Africans as well as the Europeans. Reading Out of Africa from a modern perspective, it definitely has some problematic elements, coming as it does from a colonial mindset, but Dinesen clearly cared about and respected the native African people she came in contact with, even if they were mostly her servants or subordinates on the farm built on land that was stolen from them. I can see why a movie made nearly 50 years later would find it difficult to portray some of her stories without seeming racist, but the decision to eliminate or greatly reduce the role of almost all of the African characters in order to expand a European love triangle isn't much better. And then, adding insult to injury, they couldn't even do justice to any of those three white people. Despite all this, the movie does have a few things to recommend it, and I don't hate it, but I'm almost completely certain that Isak Dinesen would have.

I cannot even begin to express how relieved I am to finally be done with this story. Next up is Room with a View, thankfully based on only one relatively short novel by E. M. Forster. So it should be significantly less than two and a half months until my next post.

1984: Amadeus

Screenplay by Peter Shaffer
Adapted from the play Amadeus by Peter Shaffer

Salieri has an inherent love and appreciation for music, and desires nothing more than to compose great music to glorify God (and himself). To his dismay and bewilderment, however, Salieri finds that God has chosen to bestow incomparable talent not on the righteous Salieri, but on a vulgar, frivolous, silly little man named Mozart. Mad with jealousy, Salieri sets out to ruin, and perhaps even kill, his rival.

This is unquestionably one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations I've blogged about thus far. Peter Shaffer clearly has a profound understanding of the differences between these two media, and was not too devoted to his script to make several necessary changes. Perhaps the most immediately apparent change is the framing of the story. In both versions, an older Salieri narrates the story, but in the play he speaks directly to the audience, shattering the fourth wall. By contrast, in the film, Salieri tells the story to a priest in an insane asylum. To facilitate this change, Salieri's attempted suicide, which comes at the end of the play, is moved to the beginning of the film. The play employs a great theatrical method of drawing the audience in that would have been either too creepy or too hokey on film, and Shaffer evidently recognized that. In a similar vein, the play has two characters called the Venticelli, who facilitate the story and help indicate the passing of time by gossiping and carrying information between major characters. Since the film was able to use a lot more actors and a lot more sets, it could show the audience more than the play could, so the Venticelli became unnecessary, and thus were eliminated.

The movie added a lot of scenes that weren't in the play, and changed the details of most scenes it kept, but still managed to remain true to the original story (how historically accurate either version is, I'll leave to the Mozart experts to evaluate). The characters are all remarkably consistent, despite many changes to the specifics of their stories. For example, in the film, Salieri hires a maid to spy on the Mozarts, which isn't something he does in the play, but it's definitely something the Salieri of the play could have conceivably done. The movie does seem significantly longer, although by reading the play rather than watching it I didn't get a very good sense of how long the music lasted during the concert scenes. When I blogged about this movie's Best Picture win, I complained about the length, but also noted that there wasn't much that could have been cut out. After reading the play, I can see how it could have been shorter, but I honestly can't fault anything that was added for the film. It's a brilliantly crafted story, and if it seems a bit slow, it's never boring. I don't think I'd watched it since that blog, and I'm not sad I had an excuse to watch it again.

I hope, though I highly doubt, that I'll feel the same way about the next film, another very long Best Picture winner, Out of Africa, which I did not particularly enjoy when I watched it before. Enough time has passed that I wouldn't necessarily mind having to re-watch it, but it was adapted from three different books, none of which is particularly short, so it may be quite a while before you hear from me again.