Novel Adaptation

Prior to his untimely death in 2004, Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson wrote a trio of novels collectively known as the Millennium Trilogy. Written in his native Swedish tongue, the stories have proved a critical and commercial success, and all three have already been turned into Swedish language movies.

This month sees the DVD rental release of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, originally titled Män Som Hatar Kvinnor or Men Who Hate Women. The film, much like its source material, has enjoyed mass acclaim from pretty much everyone, and deservedly so.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo introduces the trilogy’s two main protagonists; firstly Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged investigative journalist writing for the magazine Millennium. His attempts to uncover the corrupt nature of Swedish billionaire and industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström have gone awry and resulted in a libel case against him. He will have to serve three months in prison, but has a few months before he must face his sentence.

The title character and movie heroine is Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-something with prior issues relating to behaviour and mental stability, but a brilliant researcher. She has been hired by ultra-rich Henrik Vanger of the Vanger Group in order to check the legitimacy and authenticity of Mikael Blomkvist’s reputation as a skilled investigator.

Satisfied with Mikael’s credentials, Vanger meets with Blomkvist and requests that he investigate the disappearance of his foster child Harriet, who has been missing for 40 years and presumed dead. The circumstances surrounding the disappearance are more than suspicious, and Henrik suspects foul play from none other than a member of his own twisted, money-hungry family.

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Modern cinematic heavyweights Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio team up for the fourth time in this eerie and brooding mystery thriller, based on a novel by Dennis Lehane.

Set in the fifties, Shutter Island sees Leo’s U.S. Marshall Edward ‘Teddy’ Daniels investigating the apparent disappearance of a mental patient from a totally locked and guarded room. The patient, Rachel Solando, is a resident at the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane, located on the otherwise desolate Shutter Island.

Daniels is accompanied by his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), as they attempt to solve the unusual case. Their hospital ‘guide’ is head psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley, portrayed by Sir Ben Kingsley, who makes no bones about coming across as rather sinister and creepy.

It does not take long to establish that there is a lot more going on that a crazy woman with a talent for matter displacement. Daniels believes from the offset that the island and its inhabitants, including Cawley, have some dark and desperate secrets buried within those not-so-solid hospital walls.

Secrets from Teddy’s own past, a few suspect twitches from various characters, a cameo from Max von Sydow, a visit to the ‘off-limits’ prison/hospital on the hill, a secluded and mysterious lighthouse and some weirdness on a cliff all help to create a bizarre, baffling and intriguing mystery shot by a master of cinema.

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In 2002, relatively unknown author Alice Sebold saw her first fiction novel, The Lovely Bones, become a bestseller, garnering almost universal critical acclaim from the literary world, and owing many of its sales to word of mouth.

Such surprise success would almost certainly result in talk of a film adaptation, and Peter Jackson, the man behind the glorious Lord of the Rings adaptations, was the man eventually handed director’s duties by producer Steven Spielberg.

The film adaptation of The Lovely Bones sees 14 year-old photographer-wannabe Susie Salmon lulled into an underground trap by a neighbour named George Harvey. It appears at first that, after a brief struggle, she manages to escape and run to freedom, but it quickly becomes clear that she has been murdered and is watching the subsequent events that occur after her death.

She watches from a heaven-like place; a world that is only limited by her own imagination, and one which serves as a precursor to her spirit’s final resting place. She remains in this limbo until such time that she chooses to move on; something which she is regularly encouraged to do by a mysterious little girl who accompanies her.

She observes her family and friends, and their respective responses to her untimely, grotesque demise. Her attempts to contact her loved ones have minimal success and only serve to aggravate the situation, as her father, Jack, starts to lose his mind in his relentless quest for justice. Meanwhile, her murderer attempts to cover up any evidence of his sickening act, although it is clear he has other secrets to hide.

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1963 saw the release of a controversial children’s picture book called Where The Wild Things Are. It was written and illustrated by American Maurice Sendak, and contained little more than ten sentences. It was, arguably, an allegorical piece, cleverly portraying the difficulties and strains on parent and child. It was a huge hit with children, and has gained legendary status as a groundbreaking piece of children’s literature.

It is hard to believe that something so short, aimed at kids, could metaphorically encompass the complexities of childhood, aggression, loneliness and love; but a picture paints a thousand words.

Almost 50 years later, quasi-loon and creative genius Spike Jonze has brought the story to the big screen with a lavish adaptation. You may remember him as the lead street dancer in the video for Praise You, by Fatboy Slim. He directed this video, as well as countless others including Weapon of Choice (Slim, again), Buddy Holly (Weezer) and surreal Kaufman movies Adaptation and Being John Malkovic.

Where The Wild Things Are would be a new challenge, but he certainly possesses the imagination to bring it to life.

Eight-year-old Max is a lonely boy with an active imagination, and once he becomes frustrated with his perceived lack of attention from his sister Claire and divorcee mother Connie, he decides to do a runner dressed as a wolf.

Max keeps running until he finds a small unattended boat at a nearby riverbank, and sets off into unknown territory. The seas take him to a strange land of sand and forest, and the home of 7 large surprises.

He meets the ‘Wild Things’; a collection of 7-foot creatures with a penchant for eating new arrivals. Max stares them down and tells them that he has great powers from another land – he can ‘explode heads’. He tells them that he is a great king, and will punish them if they try to devour him.

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Cormac McCarthy is one of the finest writers in modern literature; he has produced instant classics with Blood Meridian and All The Pretty Horses, not to mention a certain novel titled No Country For Old Men.

The latter is a truly brilliant and breathtaking book, and many who did not appreciate the film would have done well to check out the source material first, in order to gain a better understanding of the story, its purpose and the reasons behind the opinion-splitting ending.

McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with The Road, a literary work that is magnificent beyond words. It is the story of a man and his son as they attempt to survive an arduous journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The film version, directed by The Proposition helmer John Hillcoat, faithfully adapts the book into a stark, vivid and harrowing piece of cinema.

The two embark on an emotionally and physically draining quest to stay alive in a barren, cold and savage environment where vicious cannibals are a constant threat, and thieves would not think twice about stealing a blanket from a sleeping child.

Man and boy are heading south, out of hope more than anything else. We do not know their names, we do not know what happened to the world and we certainly do not know if they can survive this bleak, unforgiving hell.

A moment of weakness and fatigue sees them investigate a house where they find something truly horrifying in the basement, whilst the man’s own savage survival instincts cause him to defy his son’s desperate request of leniency towards a thief they hold at gunpoint.

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A man sporting a horrible disfigurement turns up at your door with an offer. He tells you that your money worries could be over; you can have one million dollars in cash, but you have to press a button that will initiate the death of someone that you do not know. What would you do?

The Box introduces us to happily married couple Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur (James Marsden) Lewis living their lives in a quiet suburban area in the late 70s. Arthur works for NASA and is awaiting approval to enter the astronaut program, whilst Norma is a school teacher.

She has a disfigurement relating to her foot that hinders her ability to walk, but her loving husband is secretly working on some technology that could permanently fix this. Their touching relationship is magnified by the presence of their bright and happy young son, Walter.

Norma’s school tells her that the staff discount she receives for her own son’s tuition is to be scrapped. This is coupled with further bad news; Arthur is turned down for the astronaut program despite his absolute confidence that he strolled through every test without any problems.

The couple turn to each other, vowing to soldier on in the face of adversity. But a peculiar box, containing a red button within a locked dome, is delivered to their door in the early hours, and an accompanying note states that Arlington Stewart (Frank Langella) will be visiting the next day at 5pm. True to the words of the note, burn-victim Arlington Stewart knocks at the door and presents his bizarre and morally questionable offer. Norma and Arthur can use the key to open the dome and press the red button, leaving themselves one million dollars richer. But someone, somewhere, whom they do not know, will die. They have 24 hours to decide, and once that time has elapsed Arlington Stewart will return and reclaim the box.

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Based on the epic novel by Jacques Chardonne, Les Destinées Sentimentales charts thirty years of French history through the eyes of two star-crossed lovers.

Set among the bourgeois protestant families of the Limoges region of France, Les Destinées follows the career of Jean Barnery (Charles Berling), the reluctant heir of a traditional porcelain business who must learn to steer his way through the frantic beginnings of the 20th century.

Barnery starts out as a minister in the small Protestant community of Barbazac, but after a scandalous divorce leaves his vocation and young daughter and embarks on a passionate romance with the orphaned Pauline (Emmanuelle Béart), a headstrong atheist whom he will later marry. The two wives are polar opposites, and tap into different areas of Barnery’s character. The first Mme Barnery, played by an icy Isabelle Huppert, exemplifies religious stricture; Pauline’s wide eyes and welcoming smile suggest a warm, open sexuality.

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Adapted from Bernhard Schlink’s bestseller and starring Kate Winslet as a former SS officer and David Kross as her schoolboy lover, The Reader throws up difficult questions about the nature of culpability in the Holocaust.

Ralph Feinnes plays Michael Burg, an uptight German lawyer who is first seen in his sleek, minimalist apartment preparing an orderly breakfast for his bedfellow before bidding her an awkward goodbye - director Stephen Daldry does not shy away from stereotypes of standoffish Germans. The film then flashes back to the late 50s to when Michael (now played by Kross) was 15.Not yet out of school, he begins an illicit and passionate affair with a 34-year-old tram-conductor named Hanna (Kate Winslet), who first encountered him on the street when he was suffering from a painful bout of scarlet fever. She enjoys listening to him read to her, and lust soon blossoms into love, until one day Hanna disappears without trace.

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In this tale of domestic strife, Sam Mendes returns to a familiar theme: the tarnished American Dream. However, the scathing satire of his directorial debut, American Beauty, takes on a far bleaker tone in Revolutionary Road. Based on Richard Yates’ 60s novel, the film reunites Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for the first time since James Cameron’s smash hit Titanic in 1997.

Following in the footsteps of the 1966 film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the story follows Frank Wheeler and his wife April, a young couple trapped in a marriage of conformity during the fifties. Frank works in a job he hates, yet affects an air of superiority, believing he’s destined for a better life, though clueless as to what that life might be. His wife is a typical 50’s homemaker, raising two children in the couple’s immaculate suburban home and wondering what has become of her youthful ambitions. It’s a tarnished version of the American Dream. “Look at us,” April moans to Frank. “We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion - this idea that you have to settle down and resign from life.”

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Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s religious thriller The Da Vinci Code was one of the highest-grossing films of the decade, earning over US$230 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Yet you’d be hard pushed to find a critic who gave its contrived storyline and turgid script the thumbs up. Angels and Demons, which comes before The Da Vinci Code in Dan Brown’s canon but has been adapted for the big screen as a sequel, is slicker and pacier than its predecessor. Howard, along with adapters Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, stick less rigidly to Dan Brown’s clunky prose this time round, resulting in a more confident, dazzling production. Unfortunately, despite the film’s glossy exterior, it tells a story that is both convoluted and, at time, utterly ludicrous.

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