2007: No Country for Old Men

Screenplay by Joel & Ethan Coen
Adapted from the novel No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

When he stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong, Llewelyn Moss can't resist the temptation of taking the millions of dollars in cash he finds. But the people who own that cash want it back, and the man they send to retrieve it, Anton Chigurh, is a force to be reckoned with. The county sheriff does all he can to either catch Chigurh or find Moss before it's too late.

I know this movie is very highly acclaimed and a lot of people really like it, but it's just not my cup of tea. It's too violent, and nothing good happens, and it doesn't help to know that this whole thing could have been prevented if Moss had just walked away. But while I personally don't happen to like this movie, I will say that it is a very good adaptation of the novel (which, unsurprisingly, I also didn't particularly care for).

A few details were changed here and there, and obviously some things were cut out, but overall I think the Coen brothers did a good job of deciding what to keep and what to change. Chigurh is described in the book as looking nothing like Javier Bardem, but I don't think it would have been possible to play that character better than he did, so his appearance was fairly irrelevant. The book does have a lot more about the sheriff in it: he introduces every chapter, so we get a lot more of his backstory, but I think it was a good choice to focus less on him and more on Moss. The main storyline is quite consistent with the book until toward the climax. In both versions, Moss is with a woman, but who she is and why they're together is completely different, and she's way more important in the book. But again, for the sake of simplifying and focusing the story, I think they made the right decision there as well.

I wondered going into this if reading the book and re-watching the movie so many years later would make me like it more than I did during my Best Picture project. While I still don't like the story at all, this time I was able to recognize that it's very well done, for what it is. It's definitely one of the better novel-to-screen adaptations I've seen. But I think if I decide in the future to tackle another category that this movie won, I might have to skip it, because I'm not sure I can sit through it again.

Next up is yet another Best Picture Winner: Slumdog Millionaire, based on the novel by Vikas Swarup

2006: The Departed

Screenplay by William Monahan
Adapted from the film Infernal Affairs, screenplay by Felix Chong and Alan Mak

This is the story of two moles: a cop undercover as a mobster, and a mobster undercover as a cop. Each finds out that the other exists, and must now discover the other's identity before he himself is exposed.

Infernal Affairs is the English language title of a Cantonese film made and set in Hong Kong. The Departed moves the setting to Boston. As one might expect, several cultural changes accompany this change in setting. Several details regarding both the police force and the mob were altered, but the overall story remained fairly consistent. The American version is about a half hour longer and much cruder. One of the main things I noticed when I watched The Departed for my Best Picture project was all the profanity, so I was surprised that there was hardly any in Infernal Affairs. The mob boss is also significantly more perverted in the remake, in so many ways. I'm not positive that these particular changes were necessarily to reflect cultural differences, but it makes me sad to think that the defining traits of American culture are profanity and objectification of women.

Both stories are mostly centered around male characters, but Infernal Affairs has three relatively important female characters: the undercover mobster's fiancee, the psychiatrist that the undercover cop is required to see after getting out of jail, and an ex-girlfriend of the undercover cop who has a child that is implied to be his. All three of these women are combined into one character in the remake: the undercover mobster becomes engaged to the undercover cop's psychiatrist, who reveals she is pregnant after having a one-night stand with the undercover cop. I have mixed feelings about this change: on the one hand, none of the three women in the original had a very well developed personality, so combining them into one person gave more opportunities to flesh out her character. On the other hand, that meant the remake had literally one important female character, apart from the women the mob boss slept with, which is kind of irritating. But since both moles were living essentially the same lives in reverse, it was interesting to have them both attracted to the same woman.

The other major changes are pretty spoilery, so I don't want to go into too much detail, since both films are well worth watching, despite their poor female representation. I will say that The Departed has a significantly higher body count, which should surprise no one. Also it seemed to me that the characters in Infernal Affairs had basically good intentions, but circumstances often turned them into bad people, whereas in The Departed, the characters seemed to have basically selfish intentions, which occasionally led them to do good things. The mobster who's undercover in the police force in particular does pretty much the same actions in both versions, but in the original it's at least partly because he's trying to turn over a new leaf and actually become a good cop, whereas in the remake it's entirely out of self-preservation. Fascinatingly, his story ends up completely differently, mostly because of a character who was added to the remake.

I liked The Departed better with this viewing than when I watched it for my Best Picture blog, but I definitely think Infernal Affairs is a better movie. I'm glad that this project gave me an excuse to watch a very good Hong Kong-made film that I probably wouldn't have otherwise heard of. Apparently there's a trilogy, and I'm kind of tempted to track down the sequels, although the first one is a pretty good stand-alone story.

After the first, and so far only, remake of a feature film to win this award, I'm headed back to movies based on novels, starting with No Country for Old Men, a movie that I notoriously loathed when I did my Best Picture project. I'm interested to see if reading the novel changes my opinion, although I've started reading it, and so far, not so much.

2005: Brokeback Mountain

Screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana
Adapted from the short story Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

In the summer of 1963, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist get a job tending sheep on Brokeback Mountain. To their surprise, they find that they have developed romantic feelings for each other, and begin a passionate love affair. When the summer, and consequently the job, ends, the two go their separate ways and attempt to move on with their lives apart, but their feelings are not so easily repressed.

This was a much more faithful adaptation than the previous winner. Almost everything from the short story made it into the movie, and all the things that were added were perfectly consistent. Adapting a short story, rather than a novel, into a feature film allows the story to be expanded rather than edited, but what I've noticed with some of the other winners based on short stories is sometimes so much is added that it's barely recognizable as the same story. That was certainly not the case here. Most of the additions consisted of showing more details of events that were briefly touched on in the story, and further developing some of the characters, particularly Ennis's daughter. The adaptation is unquestionably telling the same story as the original, just in a slightly different way to suit the change of medium. In other words, it's a very good adaptation.

This win is a refreshing departure from the typical straight-washing that many winning adapted screenplays have been guilty of. The most noticeable offender was probably A Beautiful Mind, but several other original stories had LGBT+ characters who were either eliminated or portrayed as straight, or at the very least their sexuality was not mentioned. Granted, since this entire story is about a homosexual romance, it would have been very difficult to erase the LGBT+ element completely, but I could see the movie downplaying it, or making it seem like one of them was a predator while the other was really a well-behaved straight boy, or ruining it some other way. But surprisingly, Ennis and Jack's romance is portrayed on screen almost exactly as it unfolded in the short story. The movie doesn't show quite as much sex as the book describes, but it's all implied. Both men do marry women in the movie, but that's consistent with the original, and with the time in which it's set. Overall, I'm impressed. Is it the best adaptation ever? No. But is it a lot better than one would have come to expect, given the subject matter? Absolutely.

Coming up is another stretch of Best Picture winners, starting with The Departed, which was the first remake of a feature film to win this award

2004: Sideways

Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor
Adapted from the novel Sideways by Rex Pickett

Unsuccessful writer Miles takes his actor friend Jack on a wine tasting tour as a last hurrah before Jack's wedding. Miles is mostly focused on the wine, but Jack wants to have one last fling (or more) before settling down, and is also determined to help Miles get over his recent divorce.

I'm just going to say this up front: I strongly disliked this book, and I thought the movie was even worse. I think it might have helped if I knew or cared anything about wine, but since I don't, this story has essentially nothing to recommend itself to me. The main characters are a pretentious wine snob who complains about everything and a smarmy playboy who objectifies women. Pretty much all they do is get drunk and pursue women. To be fair, I must point out that at least Miles was opposed to Jack cheating on his fiancée, but he was too busy being obnoxious to do anything about it.

The book was bad enough, but the movie changed or eliminated most of the few things I didn't dislike about it. There's a whole scene in the book where this guy offers to take Miles and Jack boar hunting, but then starts shooting at them, which is very weird and rather out of place in the story (I assume that's why it was cut), but it was one of the few times when the book held my interest, so I was sad it wasn't in the movie. This elimination also means that Jack's girlfriend doesn't get to have a gun when she confronts him after finding out about his engagement, since in the book she used the one they took from the boar hunter. But this fits in with the theme of most of the changes from page to screen: the movie takes away pretty much all of what little power the book gave its female characters.

One thing that surprised me about the book, given that it was written by a man from a man's perspective, was how much it emphasized women's sexual pleasure. I was disappointed but not surprised that all of that was cut from the movie. For some reason Hollywood is okay with men being crude about sex, but draws a line at men talking about how much they like to satisfy women. This isn't news, but it was particularly evident in this adaptation, and I found certain offensive lines of Jack's even more offensive when compared with what he actually said in the book. In a similar vein, Jack's fiancée (whose name is Babs in the book and Christine in the movie) is way more aware of what's going on, telling Miles at the wedding that if Jack slept with anyone during their trip, they were even, which definitely does not happen in the movie. I also thought it was weird that the movie cut out the whole Jack paying Maya to sleep with Miles thing that led to Miles punching Jack in the face and one of Jack's many trips to the ER (all but one of which were eliminated from the movie), since that was pretty crucial to the story in the novel, and the entire remainder of the story suffers from the elimination of that scene.

The point I'm trying to make is it would be one thing if this just wasn't my kind of story. I wouldn't be happy about having to read and watch it, but I could go with that. But the thing is, I felt like this was a terrible adaptation. Almost all of the interesting parts of the book were eliminated or changed to make them less interesting, and the story barely holds together. Apparently, I'm in the minority here, since this movie has 7.5/10 on IMDb and 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I think this might be my least favorite winner of this award so far.

Coming up next: Brokeback Mountain, based on the short story by Annie Proulx

2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Screenplay by Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh
Adapted from the novel The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, and also technically from the novels The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers by Tolkien, and the screenplays The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers by Boyens, Jackson, Walsh, and Stephen Sinclair

This is the third installment of Frodo Baggins the hobbit's quest to destroy the One Ring and save Middle Earth from the darkness. Frodo ventures into Mordor with Sam and Gollum, while the other remaining members of the Fellowship rush to defend Gondor.

For the most part, this is a remarkably faithful adaptation, given the length and complexity of the source material. The story is very much the same, although it unfolds quite differently. The first half of the book is entirely from the perspectives of pretty much everyone except Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, and then the second half picks up with those three where their story left off at the end of the second book. The movie, on the other hand, switches back and forth between different characters' stories much more frequently, which works well in the film. The way the book does it works on the page, but I think it would have been annoying to have to wonder what Frodo's up to for the entire first half of the movie. I did find it interesting that the last three chapters of The Two Towers were not in the Two Towers movie, and instead are incorporated into this movie. I'm not entirely sure why they did that, since this movie certainly did not need to be any longer than it already would have been, but I think it probably has to do with the way the story was restructured. Frodo's section of the Return of the King book is much shorter than the section about everyone else, so adding some of his Two Towers story into this movie helped the switching back and forth feel more balanced.

Beyond this, and some omissions and simplifications as are always required when adapting a novel into a feature film, the main difference I noticed is that the movie makes things a lot more obvious than the book. It's clearer what certain characters' motivations are in the movie much earlier than in the book, which I think is partly a timing thing (again, the movie is plenty long without having every character reveal their intentions gradually), but also it's harder to keep the audience in suspense when you're showing things to them rather than describing them. For example, when Éowyn rides to battle in disguise, in the book Merry doesn't recognize her, and the reader doesn't find out that it's her until much later, whereas in the movie Merry does recognize her, and the audience knows it's her the whole time. It would have been difficult to disguise her enough to hide her identity from the audience while still allowing her to reveal herself quickly when she needs to, so this change made a lot of sense. Most of the other changes were similar to this.

When I blogged about this movie for my Best Picture project, I was annoyed at its departures from the novel. This time, however, I was impressed by how well the story was adapted to the screen. I think this project has changed my perspective on film adaptations. Back then, the Harry Potter movies were still coming out, and I was still being constantly disappointed by them, so I think I felt that epic books like these were sacred, and trying to put them on screen was akin to tearing them apart and burning them. But having read and watched so many page-to-screen adaptations recently, I now feel I have a better understanding of what is reasonable to expect from a film adaptation of a novel. Obviously things need to be omitted and changed, it's just a question of which things to omit and change. Yes, there are parts of The Return of the King the book that I would have liked to see in the movie that were cut out, but I think overall this movie does a relatively good job of keeping the heart of the story intact, and for a story like this, that's really the most important thing.

I'm glad I had an excuse to re-read and -watch The Lord of the Rings, but I'm also glad to finally be done with that so I can move on with this project. Next up is a movie I've never seen before based on a book I've never read before: Sideways, based on the novel by Rex Pickett.

2002: The Pianist

Screenplay by Ronald Harwood
Adapted from the memoir The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 by Władysław Szpilman

Władysław Szpilman was a Jewish pianist in Warsaw when World War II broke out. Although his parents and siblings were murdered, he managed to survive, and soon after the end of the war, he wrote down everything that had happened to him. His book was originally published in Poland 1946, but was suppressed by the Communist government and was not republished until 1999, the year before his death.

For the most part, this is a remarkably faithful adaptation. Most of the incidents in the book are portrayed in the film almost exactly as Szpilman described them. Some of the people were combined, omitted, or added, and some periods of waiting in hideouts were significantly shortened, but these alterations merely served to make the story flow better without detracting from its overall message or feel. Szpilman seems to have written this as a journal to help himself process what happened, so occasionally he mentions people without really explaining who they were. The movie does a great job of tying things together by further developing some of the other people involved in Szpilman's story.

There was one change that I don't really understand, and that's in Szpilman's interactions with the German soldier. The gist of what happens is consistent, but most of what they say to each other was changed. When they part, in the book, Szpilman offers his name without being asked and tells the soldier to use it if he is in trouble after the war. In the movie, the German soldier asks for his name so that he can listen for him on the radio. Ultimately the outcome is the same, but the book makes it more clear that Szpilman always intended to help the soldier who had helped him, and I'm not sure why the movie chose to modify that. Otherwise, though, the movie is very consistent with the book, and I think this is one of the best adaptations to win this award.

Next up is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. As I have not read the books or watched the movies since May of 2011 when I was blogging about Best Picture Winners, and as all sequels are by definition adaptations, I have decided to read and watch the entire trilogy and not just the third one. According to that blog post, apparently I was not a huge fan of the way it was adapted when I first watched it, but maybe my opinion will be different eight years later. I'm excited to find out. These book aren't exactly short so you might not hear from me for a while, but I promise I will be back.

2001: A Beautiful Mind

Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman
Adapted from the book A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

Brilliant mathematician John Nash came up with some theorems that ultimately completely changed modern economics, but also suffered from schizophrenia.

I really can't summarize any better than that because the book and the movie are so completely different. If it weren't for the name John Nash and a few of the specific mathematical theorems, it wouldn't be immediately apparent that they were about the same man. The book is a fairly comprehensive biography. The author seems to have interviewed nearly everyone who ever knew Nash in order to include their observations and insights into his life. The movie, on the other hand, is mostly from Nash's perspective. Readers of the book see his illness the way people who knew Nash observed its affects on him; viewers of the movie experience it with him.

When I blogged about this movie during my Best Picture project (here), I didn't even want to mention his schizophrenia because it's such a plot twist. His delusions are presented as factual until suddenly he's in a mental hospital and surprise! A bunch of the characters aren't even real. In the book, though, from the very beginning allusions are made to his forthcoming psychotic breaks, so it definitely doesn't seem like a spoiler anymore. The movie makes his delusions much more coherent than they were described in the book. Although the things movie Nash says don't really make sense because the people he's talking about aren't really there, they still remain logical and easy to follow. In the book, he isn't described as having visual hallucinations at all; he does hear voices, but mostly he just has these feelings and ideas that he needs to do things like give up his passport or write letters to important people or go to Europe. The way they adapted this is a great example of making changes to suit a different medium. Trying to demonstrate what actually happened to Nash on screen would have been nearly impossible. Visual hallucinations, however, work very well in movies, and by showing things from his perspective, what could have been a dry biopic becomes a suspense thriller. So while this makes for a completely inaccurate portrayal of Nash's experiences, it also makes for a fascinating movie.

It's not just the details of his illness and the way it's conveyed to the audience that the movie changed; most of the other aspects of his life are completely different as well. Movie Nash is portrayed as very socially awkward, particularly around women, although he desperately wants to sleep with them. The author of the book, on the other hand, implies that Nash was really more attracted to men than to women, describing several homosexual romances. He also fathered a child with a woman whom he said he intended to marry but never did, choosing instead to marry Alicia - his only romantic interest in the movie. The film also neglects to mention that John and Alicia got divorced when he kept refusing treatment and became violent toward her and their son (who later also developed schizophrenia, another fact not mentioned in the film). Once Nash started behaving more rationally, he did move back in with Alicia, but at the time the book was published, they had not gotten remarried. Interestingly, they did remarry in 2001, and I have to wonder how much the movie coming out had to do with that. Anyway, obviously one wouldn't expect a feature film to go into all the sordid details of someone's life, but it was strange to go from a book about a man who pursued other men, and occasionally women, to a movie about a man who is very into women but clueless about how to find a mate. Hollywood straight-washing at its finest.

Coming up next: The Pianist, based on the memoir by Władysław Szpilman