Don’t have time to read and watch?
Here’s how closely the adapted screenplay nominees line up with the literary titles
“Which is better, the book or the film?”
It’s a question that always gets asked when movie lovers and readers start talking. It’s no mean feat to do a good adaptation or to pick the best one: just ask the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Oscar for best adapted screenplay is probably the most labourintensive of the major categories. Reading the source material and watching the films is a daunting process (and one that it’s difficult to imagine all the category voters embraced), but it’s essential if one is concerned with the nature of the adaptation rather than the quality of the final product.
If you don’t have that kind of time (it’s a lot of time), here’s a breakdown of the nominees.
American Fiction
Writer and director Cord Jefferson’s script for “American Fiction” is a relatively straightforward and generally faithful adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” which follows critically respected writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison who, in a fit of anger over the state of publishing and his own career (his work is seen as insufficiently Black to satisfy the mass market), writes a parody of, as the Guardian put it, “ghetto novels,” which to his surprise and continued anger becomes a critical and commercial success. While Jefferson eschews most of the complex structure of the novel, it hits most of the narrative beats (while at the same time blunting some of Monk’s rage). It’s a complex adaptation, but the screenplay is largely true to the source.
The Zone of Interest
Writer and director Jonathan Glazer’s screenplay for “The Zone of Interest” takes considerably more liberties with Martin Amis’s 2014 novel of the same name. The film, in fact, seems to take the general concept of the book — domestic life in the shadow of Auschwitz — and builds a completely different narrative around it. Rather than the story of erotic obsession in Amis’s novel, the film is a representation of Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil,” focusing on the upward bureaucratic striving of camp Commandant Rudolf Höss, and the domestic and social striving of his wife Hedwig. The screenplay is brilliant, but the storyline is largely original to the film, inspired by the book but barely an adaptation.
Poor Things
Tony McNamara’s script for Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” (nominated for best adapted screenplay and best picture) manages a tricky balancing act in its adaptation from Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel. The book is almost as quirky as the film (though in different ways): it is presented as a historical manuscript, “Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer,” “discovered” in the trash and edited by Gray. While the book, like the film, is focused on Bella who, following her suicide, is brought back to life via the transplant of her unborn daughter’s brain, it is McCandless’s account of her life. In the movie, McCandless is shifted to a supporting role: through him viewers are introduced to Bella (played by Emma Stone) and her “creator,” Godwin Baxter, but the movie is Bella’s story through and through. The film is beautiful, but the script is somewhat reductive, losing much of the strange magic of the novel.
Oppenheimer
The source for Christopher Nolan’s script for his best picture (and best adapted screenplay) nominee “Oppenheimer” is Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 biography “American Prometheus.” The film is structured as a set of interweaving storylines, with the generally linear life of the scientist (in colour) set against the postbomb political struggles with Lewis Strauss through congressional and security hearings (in black and white). The book is much more linear, following the events of Oppenheimer’s life chronologically although the preface to the book introduces readers to Oppenheimer in 1953, on the day when Strauss reveals his campaign against him. Nolan’s is a compelling screenplay and perhaps the best example of adaptation among the nominated films.
Barbie
Which brings us to the two central ironies surrounding the best adapted screenplay category this year. The first is that the front-runner for the prize is an adaptation in name only. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s screenplay for “Barbie” is a brilliant, playful feminist deconstruction of the Barbie mythos, but its source is the intellectual property and characters created by Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie, which virtually meaningless as far as an adaptation goes.
The second irony is that the best adaptation of the year isn’t nominated.
While David Grann’s powerful 2017 book “Killers of the Flower Moon” begins with the story of Mollie Kyle and her family, and their role in the murders and robbery of the Osage people at the hands of the rapacious William King Hale and his cohorts, the book focuses more on the investigation into these crimes. Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese’s script foregrounds the Osage people and Mollie in particular, an emphasis more powerful and emotionally affecting than any of the nominated screenplays.