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