Oscar-Worthy Graphic Novel Films: A History of Violence

This post is the final part of an article I was asked to write for the Houston Public Library blog. The final article will be posted some time in the near future, in its entirety, on that website.


A History of Violence

A crime thriller with a uniquely-executed plot by John Wagner and art by Vince Locke, this story was first published in 1997 by Paradox Press.  The film was made in 2005, directed by David Cronenberg and stars Viggo Mortensen with a script adapted from the graphic novel by Josh Olson.


The film received two Oscar nominations at the 78th Academy Awards, including Best Actor -- William Hurt, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) -- Josh Olson.  It won neither award, losing Best Actor to George Clooney for Syriana, and Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) to Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana for Brokeback Mountain.


Plot: Tom Stall, a diner owner in Milbrook, Indiana, lives a peaceful and relatively low-key life until a pair of killers enter his establishment.  He defends himself and his co-workers with remarkable skill, and is hailed as a hero for the incident.  But his fame attracts more trouble, as mobsters from out of town have identified him as a man who crossed them a long time ago.  Tom maintains his ignorance of these men, but as they target his family, he is forced to defend them, raising further questions about Tom’s past and who he really is.  When he confronts the truth about his youth, Tom finds he has unwittingly made targets out of his family, and must do whatever it takes to make sure they don’t have to pay for his mistakes.


Differences from the graphic novel: Considerable, in places.  The first half of the film is pretty faithful to the source material, with only cosmetic changes like Tom’s last name (it’s Stall in the film, McKenna in the graphic novel) and the location (Indiana instead of Michigan).  Later in the story, however, things diverge significantly from the original narrative.  The pivotal character of Richard, for example, is nothing like the character from the graphic novel.  There, he was Tom’s childhood friend who helped him double-cross the mob.  In the film, he’s Tom’s brother, who is a mobster, albeit one whose life was made more difficult by Tom’s youthful actions.  The reaction of Tom’s family to finding out about his past is also handled differently in the film.  Whereas in the comic he is quickly and heartily forgiven by his wife and kids, the film seems to handle it more realistically, with his wife especially reacting with shocked outrage at how he kept his past from them and endangered them because of it.  It’s one of the few instances where I praise the veracity of the film more than the graphic novel.


As one might argue from their now regular rate of adaptation to the big screen, graphic novels have clearly become a more acceptable form of literature and entertainment by mainstream society.  With their recognition from entities like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, graphic novels are solidifying their status as viable source material for popular audiences.  If you haven’t done so already, it may be worth it to consider browsing your local library or bookstore’s collections of these easily digestible and artistically expressive tomes.


You never know--you may end up reading a story that someday wins an Oscar!

Oscar-Worthy Graphic Novel Films: Persepolis

This post is the third part of an article I was asked to write for the Houston Public Library blog. The final article will be posted some time in the near future, in its entirety, on that website.


Persepolis

Biographies and cultural studies aren’t usually my reading preferences, but Marjane Satrapi’s remarkable account of her childhood growing up in the repressive atmosphere of Iran in the late 1970s into the 1980s is a noteworthy exception.  It was published in 2000 by Pantheon Books, at first in French, and then in English, when the two existing volumes were combined into one book.  The film, animated in the same style as the graphic novel, was made in 2007, written and directed by Satrapi with Vincent Paronnaud.


The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards.  It lost to Ratatouille.


Plot: Just before her return to Iran, teenage Marjane Satrapi remembers her childhood in 1978 Tehran, where she is a charming and headstrong young girl whose aspiration is to become a prophet.  Her parents are active in the political movements of the Iranian Revolution, and Marji’s outspoken manner cause them to fear for her safety, and they send her to France to live for a few years.  Despite making friends, her sense of isolation becomes unbearable, and she returns to Iran as a young woman who must struggle to regain her sense of cultural identity.  She eventually does so, and once again finds life in Iran to be too oppressive.  She leaves Iran for good this time, but not before coming to terms with her identity as an Iranian.


Differences from the graphic novel: A few, but this animated feature is for the most part remarkably faithful to the style and presentation of the graphic novel.  The animation style in particular looks very much like the director simply had the book animated and put to motion, making an ideal bridge to the source material for movie-goers.  The scenes that take place in the “present” (relative to the rest of the story) are done in color, which was never present in the original story, though this is for just a minute segment of the film.  A few minor dialog and plot changes were made, none of which had a significant impact on the story.  For instance, after getting home from nearly being arrested as a child, Marji sings “Kids In America” in the graphic novel, where in the film she blasts a song from an Iron Maiden tape--which, amusingly, is not an Iron Maiden song at all, but a song by the films composer, Olivier Bernet.

Oscar-Worthy Graphic Novel Films: Road to Perdition

This post is the second part of an article I was asked to write for the Houston Public Library blog. The final article will be posted some time in the near future, in its entirety, on that website.

Road to Perdition

This gripping revenge story by writer Max Allan Collins and illustrator Richard Piers Rayner was first published in 1998 by Paradox Press, an imprint of DC Comics.  The film was made in 2002, directed by Sam Mendes and stars Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, and Daniel Craig, with a script adapted from the graphic novel by David Self.

The film was nominated for six Academy Awards at the 75th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor (Paul Newman), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall), Best Original Score, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing.  Of those, Hall won the Oscar for cinematography.

Plot: Michael Sullivan is a respected mob enforcer for John Rooney, who treats Michael and his family as his own.  When his older son Michael, Jr. witnesses his father kill a man during one of his jobs, he is sworn to secrecy.  But Rooney’s son Connor, who caused the murder to happen, is determined to silence the potential witness, and murders Sullivan’s wife and younger son, and has another mobster try to kill Sullivan.  Forced to run in the face of this betrayal, Sullivan takes his surviving son and embarks on a desperate quest for both survival and revenge.  When Rooney refuses to give Connor up for Sullivan’s revenge, his associates dispatch an assassin to hunt down both Sullivan and the boy.  Through their struggle, Sullivan and his son gradually come to understand and respect one another, eventually becoming comfortable with their similarities as well as their differences.

Differences from the graphic novel: Numerous.  Some minor changes, like the streamlining of O’Sullivan’s name to just Sullivan or the changing of the Looney name to Rooney, were purely cosmetic.  But there were also some substantially major differences as well, like the inclusion of Jude Law’s character, the photographer and assassin Harlen Maguire, who never existed in the original story at all.  He’s an interesting addition to the story, but I’m not sure he was really necessary.  In the graphic novel, O’Sullivan is known as the Angel of Death and feared in mob circles, and demonstrates this in several very violent action scenes as he takes on gangsters virtually singlehandedly.  In the film, his reputation, while still respected, is significantly toned down, and there is much less action violence than in the book.  One noteworthy change which made no sense was the narration, which is done by Sullivan, Jr. clearly as an adult in the graphic novel, but voiced over by the same character when he is a boy.

Oscar-Worthy Graphic Novel Films: Ghost World

This post is the first part of an article I was asked to write for the Houston Public Library blog. The final article will be posted some time in the near future, in its entirety, on that website.

As Oscar fever descends upon movie-goers this year, it’s worth noting the rise of graphic novels as popular formats to adapt for the big screen.  Be it films from comic books, superhero films, or movies made from realistic graphic fiction stories that happen to be told using text with sequential art, it’s pretty easy to pick out films we’ve seen in the last few years that were adapted from the medium.  Some movies even end up surprising audiences when they realize that it first existed essentially as a comic book.

Among these, there are a few that were exceptional enough to have been nominated for Academy Awards in one or more categories.  While it would be easy to list a number of big-budget superhero films that achieved this distinction--and there are quite a few--it’s also worthwhile to take notice of some of the less flashy, more realistic stories that have been told in these mediums.  So, for your consideration, I’ve looked into several significant films that have attained recognition from the Academy in the last ten years.

Ghost World
Originally published as serialized fiction in the alternative comic Eightball in the mid-1990s, Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World was collected into a trade paperback in 1997 and published by Fantagraphics, to considerable critical and commercial acclaim.  The film was made in 2001, directed by Terry Zwigoff and starring Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansen and Steve Buscemi, with a script adapted by Terry Zwigoff and original author Clowes.  


The film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay -- Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff at the 74th Academy Awards.  It lost to Akiva Goldsman for A Beautiful Mind.

Plot: After graduating high school, best friends and social misfits Enid and Becky drift listlessly through life, observing and commenting on the people and popular culture that pervades their unnamed small town in ways that are alternately amusing and eye-roll inducing.  Their friendship changes as they start to think about what they want to do with their lives, and they begin to drift apart.  Becky, who seems the more “normal” of the two, eventually takes steps to build a typical life, while her wilder friend Enid has a series of adventures with Seymour, a similarly lonely older man.  Eventually, she leaves town on a bus, to start a new life for herself.


Differences from the graphic novel: Thematically and plot-wise, the film is remarkably similar to the graphic novel: they essentially present a portrait of listless post-adolescent women as they try to keep themselves amused and figure out their places in the world.  I think the film’s deeper level of expressive possibilities make the characters easier to relate to in than in the graphic novel.  It’s nice to hear them talking about people, where there are more nuances and emotions conveyed than if you simply read the text and see a comparatively occasional picture of them.  One of the film’s characters, Seymour, played by Steve Buscemi, is a composite of several people from the graphic novel, and has a much larger part in the film than in the source material.  Because of this, several plot points arise in the film that are simply not portrayed in the  graphic novel, one example being a romance that happens due to a personal ad the character places early in the story.  In the comic, this is merely a setup for Enid and friends to torment the poor man, and we never see beyond that point.  In the film, we see the relationship form, progress, and eventually end.