3 books to read before watching their page-to-screen adaptation
Bridget Raymundo shares some of her favourite book-to-movie adaptations that premiered at this year's TIFF
"The movie is better than the book" is not a phrase you hear a lot. Filmmakers have to make choices about what to include, what to take out and what works best for film, which doesn't always match readers' imaginations.
Nevertheless, there are movies which capture the essence of a written story in an equally captivating way, or even give a new perspective to the narrative.
CBC Books associate producer Bridget Raymundo shared some of her favourite book-to-movie adaptations that premiered at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
On Swift Horses by Shannon Pufahl
On mirrored paths through the American West, Muriel and her new husband Lee navigate their new lives after his brother, Julius, returns after the Korean War. After the death of her mother and moving from Kansas to San Diego, Muriel chooses to sneak away to the racetracks to bet on horses.
On Swift Horses is adapted for the screen by American writer Bryce Kass, director Daniel Minahan and Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier — known for the Canadian book-to-screen adaptation, Women Talking, in 2022.
Bridget says: "I haven't really read a lot of Westerns. I found when I was reading it that even though it was historical fiction, it felt almost like a modern Western. It was just modern in the sense that Shannon's writing was so clear and direct and poetic.
"And when we bring that into the film version, it really translated into this atmosphere. The cinematographer is Luke Montpellier, who also did Women Talking, and I'm a big fan of what he did with the landscapes there."
Paying For It by Chester Brown
In Paying For It, Montreal-born cartoonist Chester Brown tells the honest and transactional nature of his experiences with sex workers after the end of a long-term relationship.
Vancouver-born filmmaker Sook-Yin Lee offers a cinematic approach to the comic with a new perspective only she can bring as the former partner of Brown.
Paying For It the film follows Chester and Sonny — Brown and Lee's alter egos — as they give each other the space to explore art, sexuality and culture in Toronto at the turn-of-the-millennium.
Bridget says: "Chester makes a decision not to show any of the faces or the racial descriptions of any of the women for their own protection. He also changes all of their names and things like that. But in the film, because it's a fictionalized form and it's much later on, you have the depth of women of colour in it, especially with Sook-Yin Lee as the director and her story kind of paralleling it as well.
"Because she's a first generation Asian Canadian, there's a depth and a richness that she adds to it that I don't think Chester could."
Love In The Big City by Sang Young Park
In Love In The Big City, romance and young adult life take centre stage. The novel explores two misfits searching for love and connection in Seoul. Roommates Jaehee and Young are used to people thinking they're dating, but Young is struggling to find love as a gay man and Jaehee is desperate for connection.
The novel was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and the film adaptation takes audiences into the world of Seoul's nightlife, dating scene and the realities of life as a young adult.
Bridget says: "This is the one book that I watched the movie and then read the book and it's because I started to pick it up and I wasn't connecting to the text. But then I watched the movie which is in Korean — and loved that and went back to the book and absolutely devoured it.
"I think this is the one moment where watching the movie before reading the book is maybe the better option, because there was such a richness of the language and the tone and the emotion that I got in seeing it in the language it was written.
"And obviously I don't speak Korean and so I was still reading subtitles, but I could see the emotion and the weight behind each of the words that they were using. And it was almost like reading it in its original language."
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
