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