Adapted from the novel The Cider House Rules by John Irving
The only significant business left in the former milling town of St. Cloud's, Maine is the orphanage, run by Dr. Larch. In addition to being a place for unwanted children to wait for adoption, it is also one of the few places for women to have safe (though illegal) abortions. Homer Wells was born in the orphanage, and after multiple failed adoptions it becomes clear that he is meant to stay. Dr. Larch begins to train Homer as his assistant, but Homer refuses to perform abortions. When a beautiful young woman shows up with her boyfriend to have an abortion, the smitten Homer decides it's finally time to leave, and he joins them to work at the boyfriend's apple orchard.
Of the winning screenplays that were written by the author of the source material, this is probably the least faithful. The novel is quite long, and rich with intriguing characters and intricate storylines, so all of it would have been way too much for a feature film. Major cuts had to be made. Irving must have realized this and decided that he would rather control what was omitted than let someone else do it. Going straight from reading the novel to watching the film was hard for me because a lot of my favorite aspects of the book didn't make it into the movie, but to one who hasn't just read the book, the movie doesn't feel like anything's missing. Any holes or gaps left by missing characters and plotlines were carefully filled and smoothed over with various modifications. The aspects that were essential to the heart of the story remained, even while the details surrounding them were significantly altered. It's really quite remarkably well done, all things considered.
Apart from the omission of Melony, who was possibly my favorite character in the book (although I kind of get why they cut her out), the only change that really bothered me was the passage of time. In the book, Homer leaves St. Cloud's before World War II starts, and doesn't return for about 20 years. In the movie, he leaves during the war, and returns about two years later. While condensing the timeline like this helped facilitate the removal of several characters and events, it just made everything in the movie seem a little too abrupt. Homer spends a lot of the book sort of treading water before he comes to his senses, and obviously the movie didn't need to show all of that, but it could have kept a little more of the "waiting and seeing". He just seems to completely change his personality a little too quickly to be believable. But for the most part, it works, and I think, while I like the book better, the adaptation was as good as it could possibly be given the constraints of a feature film. I think if I had written this novel I would never have been able to part with so much of the story to write a screenplay, but I guess that's why John Irving has an Oscar and I don't.
Well, A Star Is Born didn't win, but Blackkklansman did, which is what I was hoping would win Best Picture, so I'm excited to have an excuse to read that book in the near future. But I still have 18 more winners before I get to that one, starting with Traffic, which was the first winner based on a miniseries.
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