Book to Film Adaptations

It's always fun to see how books we have read are conceptualized by filmmakers.

Sometimes I am disappointed,

sometimes I am baffled,

(The inexplicable change in the ending of My Sister's Keeper, for example.)

 and sometimes I am impressed by the filmmaker's brilliance and imagination.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was beyond anything I could have imagined.

The first of three movies depicting The Hobbit will be released on December 14, 2012.

See the trailer [here].

(In case you are interested, Richard Armitage, the British actor who played John Thornton in North and South and Guy of Gisborne in Robin Hood will be playing Thorin Oakenshield!)

Unlike my daughter who is angry about every single change in the Harry Potter movies, I don't need the filmmakers to stay true to the book in every particular. I understand that the medium is different and that some characters will be deleted, some will be combined, some of the subplots will be eliminated, etc. There is no way to include the richness of detail that was included in the book. I just want the movie to stay true to the book at its heart, which I think many of us thought The Help adaptation accomplished.

But how are they going to pull off Life of Pi with the weather, water and wild animals? And how will they deal with the ambiguity and symbolism?

Life of Pi is in 3D and will be released on November 21, 2012.

After watching this trailer I am definitely intrigued.

The author, Yann Martel, weighs in on the movie [here].

This short video features the author and the director, Ang Lee.

It's definitely worth watching.

 

The movie I am most excited to watch is Les Miserables, which will be released on Christmas Day 2012. 

I have seen several of the other film adaptations and have been sorely disappointed in each one of them, including the 1998 movie starring Liam Neeson, which many others enjoyed.

Since Les Miserables has had such a profound influence on my life, the movie version has a lot to live up to for me.

But after watching this video I

cannot

wait!!!

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand wrote Louis Zamperini's amazing and inspiring story in her best-selling book, Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Her first book, Seabiscuit, was also a best-seller and was made into an award-winning movie, starring Tobey Maguire and Jeff Bridges. Both stories were about overcoming incredible odds, which Hillenbrand is very familiar with in her own life.

Hillenbrand wrote Unbroken  from her Washington, D.C. home, where she is mostly home bound because of a debilitating case of chronic fatigue syndrome. She has suffered from this illness for twenty five years, dealing with severe vertigo and the accompanying nausea, weakness, and debilitating fatigue. She is a true survivor in her own right.

She wrote poignantly about her experience with her illness in an article for the New Yorker.

During the seven years it took Hillenbrand to write the book, she and Zamperini never saw each other face-to-face, but communicated over the phone. It was Zamperini's great desire to meet Hillenbrand--his hero--and her health improved enough at one point for that to be possible.

Zamperini, Hillenbrand, and John Nabor, a former Olympian and friend of Zamperini

In 2008, Hillenbrand married her long-time boyfriend and college sweetheart, Borden Flanagan, who is a professor of government at American University. She talks about how he saved her life in her New Yorker article and their love story is chronicled in Bethesda Magazine.

Perhaps it took someone like Hillenbrand, whose steely persistence is required daily, to do justice to Zamperini's story.