From bookshelf to reel

Check out our reviews of some of the most inspiring and probing titles which have been adapted into films that have been nominated for this year’s Academy Awards

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl
Nomination: Best Live Action Short Film

This is a story about Henry Sugar who develops the ability to see through objects. He learns this when he comes across the story of Imdad Khan (or Imhrat Khan in the book), the man who saw the world without using his eyes. Dahl’s story is an irresistible page-turner. Benedict Cumberbatch as Sugar and Ben Kingsley as Imdad Khan bring the book to life in Wes Anderson’s adaptation. The genius of Anderson is on display. Actors transform into characters, sets change rapidly, backdrops are lifted, wigs and moustaches are worn and taken off — everything happens on screen, while a narrator reads out the story.

Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
Nomination: Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, Best Costume and Makeup, Best Picture, Best Music

Alasdair Gray’s 1992 book explores the story of a human created by a Scottish doctor Archibald McCandless and his friend Baxter, out of the remains of an unclaimed body of a young woman. The book has a Frankenstein-like mood to it. It begins with a note explaining the death of the doctor and a warning about the experimental history of Scottish medicine. It is woven with letters, diary notes, and reports which make the book exciting despite its morbid subject. It is perhaps the most talked about film this month. While Poor Things is yet to arrive in India, Yorgos Lanthimos’s direction and Emma Stone’s 
genius as an actor have received worldwide acclaim.

Zone of Interest by Martin Amis
Nomination: Best Direction, Best Sound, Best Writing, Best Picture, Best International Feature Film

This 2014 novel enters Auschwitz in 1940s, where Paul Doll, based on Rudolf Höss, the commandant of the concentration camp, lives with his family. It depicts the life of a Nazi officer who falls in love with Doll’s wife, Hannah, and the events that take place when Paul finds out. The novel switches between Paul Doll’s narration, Thomsen the Nazi officer’s narration, and Szmul’s voice who is sent to spy on Hannah. The film adaptation debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and has been called an accurate ‘portrait of the perpetrators’ who were building perfect families and homes in the neighbourhood of the most devastating sites of violence in history, the gas chambers.

American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin
Nomination: Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, Best Direction, Best Costume and Best Makeup, Best Music, Best Picture and Best Production Design

American Prometheus attempts to understand the life of J Robert Oppenheimer, popularly known as the father of the atomic bomb. Both the 2005 biography and Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation deliberately refrain from showing Oppenheimer as a straw man who must be set on fire. In fact, by following his journey through his personal experiences that shaped him, Bird and Sherwin, and Nolan present him as a much more complicated man. This is also the best element about both. This is not to be mistaken with sympathy for the man. Glimpses into his childhood, his days as a quantum physics scholar, his politics, his private life, his role in the occurrence of the world’s most terrifying tragedy, and his trial in 1954 depict the contradictions of Oppenheimer comprehensively.

Killers of The Flower Moon by David Grann
Nomination: Best Actor and Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Cinematography, Best Direction, Best Music, Best Film Editing, and Best Picture

This non-fictional book about Oklahoma in the 1920s, was published in 2017. Grann’s fearless writing grips the reader from the very beginning, as he talks about folk from Osage County living on a vast patch of land beneath which large oil deposits had been discovered. He documents their murder tracing it to a William King Hale who was finally convicted of committing multiple crimes. Martin Scorsese exposes the scars of racial injustice against the victims to the audience through the cinematic adaptation of the book. Scorsese doesn’t hold anything back, and brings a masterpiece that comments on the institutional violence against Osage Indians, the native Americans.

The Colour Purple by Alice Walker
Nomination: Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Pics courtesy/YouTube

This classic in American fiction, was published in 1982, and written as an epistolary novel. The protagonist Celie’s letters to God help us navigate her world, from the time she falls into the oppressive hands of her abusive, rapist father, to her time further with her equally tyrannical husband, until she finds comfort in the women who enter her life. Walker works with language and gives us the spirit and warmth of Black sisterhood. The book was first adapted by Steven Spielberg in 1985. Interestingly, the 2023 rendition has been turned into a musical. This opens the possibility of using music and lyrics to peer inside the individually vulnerable souls of the characters that Walker draws in the book. The film will be out on OTT platforms in the coming week.

Erasure by Percival Everett
Nomination: Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Music, Best Picture and Best Writing

Everett’s 2001 novel is a commentary about the limitations that stand before the creation of any literature, and in this case, African American literature, when writers face the painful reality of the workings of the mainstream publishing industry, consisting heavily of white professionals. It also throws light on how it works in tandem with market forces to turn readers into consumers and books into commodities, erasing real voices and human complexities. The protagonist Thelonious Ellison, or “Monk”, writes a novel My Pafology, under his pseudonym Stagg Leigh, as a satire against such expectations from Black writers. However, he is shockingly offered a large sum of money for the manuscript which becomes a success. Erasure has been adapted for the big screen as American fiction and is being spoken about for its exceptional wit and humour as Jeffrey Wright takes on the character of Monk, who keeps the narrative emotionally grounded.

Other adaptations

>> How Do You Live? By Genzaburo Yoshino: (The Boy and the Heron) Nomination: Best Animated Feature Film
>> Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie by Richard Montañez: (Flamin’ Hot) Nomination: Best Music
>> Guardians of the Galaxy comic series: Nomination: Best Visual Effects
>> Nimona by ND Stevenson: Nomination: Best Animated Feature Film
>> Find a Way by Diana Nyad: (Nyad) Nomination:  Best Actress in Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role
>> Robot Dreams by Sara Varon: Nomination: Best Animated Feature Film
>> Spider-Man comic: (Spiderman: Across the Spider-verse) Nomination: Best Animated Feature Film

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