2009: Precious (based on the novel Push by Sapphire)

Screenplay by Geoffrey S. Fletcher
Adapted from the novel Push by Sapphire

Precious is sixteen years old and pregnant with her second child by her father. Molested and abused by both her parents and unable to read, Precious is used to no one caring about her. Then she's sent to an alternative school, where she feels seen for the first time.

This is a heart-wrenching, thoroughly upsetting story, but honestly, I wish more Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar-winners were like this. The movie changes some things around, omits a few details, adds a few characters, but keeps the heart of the original story, and doesn't shy away from dealing with the harsher aspects of the novel. Not every instance of abuse described in the book is directly translated to the screen, but the movie shows enough to give a good impression of what Precious's life has been like without glossing over anything, but also without focusing too heavily on what happened to her and losing the character herself, which I found impressive. In short, this is an adaptation that successfully remains true to its source material without becoming confined to it, which is what I'm always hoping for and only rarely find.

While the movie does an outstanding job of adapting Precious's story, it could have done better in its portrayal of the other girls in her class at the alternative school. The film made them seem significantly meaner and cattier than the book did. The novel ends with excerpts from the book in which the whole class wrote their stories, so readers get to learn more about several of these characters, while none of that was in the movie. I get that the film wanted to focus mainly on the protagonist, and it does hint at the stories of the other girls. However, in the book they're mostly encouraging each other, and in the movie they're constantly insulting each other, so this combined with the elimination of their stories reduces them to stereotypes, while I feel like part of the point of the book is that they each had their own individual struggles that they were overcoming. Perhaps the movie was trying to show that they were only putting on a tough exterior to hide their pain, but I don't feel like it quite got there, which I found disappointing. But overall, the movie is very well done, and I think it's one of the best adaptations to win this award.

Coming up next: The Social Network, based on a book by Ben Mezrich

2008: Slumdog Millionaire

Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy
Adapted from the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup

A young, poor Indian man becomes a contestant on a quiz show, where he does so well that the show-runners are convinced he must be cheating. To prove otherwise, he is forced to recount various events from his past that explain how he came to know the answers to the questions he was asked.

Aside from this basic premise, this movie barely resembles its source material at all. The details of the story are completely different, right down to the protagonist's name (Ram Mohammad Thomas versus Jamal Malik), the name of the quiz show ("Who Will Win a Billion?" versus "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"), the total prize (one billion rupees versus 20 million rupees), and all of the questions except one (the only question he's asked in both versions is Who invented the revolver?, but the reason he knows the answer is completely different). In the book, he tells his story to a friendly lawyer, but in the movie he tells it to the hostile police. Also, the reason he's on the quiz show in the first place is completely different, but I don't really want to spoil that.

To be fair, a few of the details of the quiz show contestant's life remain consistent. In both versions there's a character named Salim who is very important to the protagonist, though their relationship and his entire personality are very different. In both versions, Salim and Ram/Jamal manage to escape as they're about to be turned into more effective beggars by being maimed (although, again, the details of this are quite different). The protagonist is also a guide at the Taj Mahal for a while in both the book and the movie. But overall, apart from winning a lot of money on a quiz show by getting asked all the right questions, Ram Mohammad Thomas and Jamal Malik are completely different characters with completely different lives. And from that perspective, this is a terrible adaptation.

I don't want to imply that Slumdog Millionaire is a bad movie; it's quite good, and I still like it. But after having read Q & A, I want another movie, one that actually follows the book, preferably made by Bollywood rather than Hollywood. There are so many fascinating incidents in the novel that I would be very interested to see in a film, like when he works for the Australians or the has-been actress. The movie doesn't do the protagonist justice, but at least it keeps him likable; however, it totally ruins the character of Salim (who is Ram's friend but Jamal's brother) and I think they should have changed his name too. It's an insult to the Salim of the book to equate him with the Salim of the movie. Book Salim is a sweet young boy who just wants to be an actor; movie Salim is spiteful and selfish and just wants to be a powerful gangster (and yes, he turns around at the end, but still).

It's funny, I feel almost the exact opposite about this win as I did about the previous win. I strongly dislike the movie No Country for Old Men, but I thought it was a good adaptation, whereas I like the movie Slumdog Millionaire but think it's a terrible adaptation. I'm curious how I'll feel about the next winner, which I've never seen before: Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, which, shockingly, was based on the novel Push by Sapphire.

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