ADAPTATIONS

André Aciman, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Irvine Welsh and Yann Martel in conversation with Sandip Roy
Presented by Patrika Game Changer Series

If there’s one age-old question that is unlikely to have a yes or no answer anytime soon, it’s ‘Can film adaptations ever live up to the book?’. While readers and film enthusiasts everywhere have had every version of this discussion, what do the authors think? A host of elite writers came together on day four of the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival to discuss just that.

When asked about their experiences watching their work being brought to the silver screen for the first time, Call Me By Your Name author André Aciman said that he initially refused to go to the premiere, because it was cold outside! When he did get around to watching the film, though, he was taken by surprise by just how sad it was – “I thought I knew the story, and I didn’t know where it was going to end.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, who wrote The Mistress of Spices, recalls a state of fugue overtaking her when she first saw its adaptation at the Toronto International Film Festival. Similarly, Life of Pi’s Yann Martel said that though he recognised the book, it felt like an unknown entity, making it an “odd experience”. Meanwhile, Irvine Welsh had the best solution to deal with such feelings of uncertainty: “Everybody got very drunk and had a great time,” he said of watching Trainspotting on the big screen.

No discussion about page-to-screen adaptations would be complete without perspectives on everything that is lost in translation between the media. Referencing the iconic ship-sinking scene from Life of Pi, Martel noted that words are very good at describing emotions and thoughts, which don’t necessarily translate into the visual medium too well. “What was three words [‘the ship sank’] in the book became several minutes in the movie,” he said.

So, how does watching actors bring their stories and characters to life affect writers’ own perception of their books? While Aciman said that he actually forgot some of the events that weren’t in the movie, Welsh felt like “the actors tend to take over”.

Authors don’t merely watch their works being brought to the big screen, though. They’re often an integral part of the process. On making cameos in adaptations of their own works, Martel said that he was “the most-directed extra”, whereas Welsh suffered a much worse fate, getting edited out of the retellings of Filth and Ecstasy. When Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni couldn’t make it to the filming of one of her adaptations, the filmmakers found a workaround by “artfully displaying” a magazine cover with her face on it in the background! As for why directors include authors in the process? “So they can’t slag off the film afterwards,” responded Welsh, leaving the audience in splits.

So, what do authors really think of their writing being taken to the silver screen? Welsh called any adaptation a “win-win” for the writer, a sentiment that was echoed by Divakaruni, who shared some sound advice her friends gave her: “Spare yourself a lot of mental anguish. Just remember that the book is always yours. At best, it will promote the book; at worst, people will say the book was better.”