Ellen’s Choice: From Page to Screen

This past weekend I went to see the long-awaited movie adaptation of John Green’s bestselling novel “The Fault in Our Stars.” I’m a big fan of alternate-medium depictions of various art forms (movies based on books, theater, or games, books that expand upon a movie or TV show, etc.) and I love to think about the ways in which a story is adapted for a new medium. Movies, TV, books, and live theater all have their own distinct methods of storytelling, and it’s an enlightening exercise to think about how the source material has to change to fit the new style. The Fault in Our Stars movie is one of the most faithful, and I think successful, adaptations I’ve seen in a long time. I’d like to take a moment to discuss a few of the ways in which I felt they most successfully navigated the transition from book to movie. I’ll refrain from spoilers in case any readers have not read the book or seen the movie yet.

Visual Effects

The Fault in Our Stars, in book form, contains a lot of virtual and text-based communication. Emails and texts play a major role in progressing the plot, reflecting the realism of modern-day communication. Going into the movie I had anticipated that this would be changed, possibly converting the texts to phone calls or some other form of spoken conversation. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the movie-makers had a better idea up their sleeves. During texting conversations the actors simply looked at their phones and reacted realistically, while little cartoon text bubbles popped up near their heads. The art style was cartoony and line-drawn, using minimal effect work to convey the content remarkably well. Similarly, email conversations were depicted with a hazy overlay of the email itself projected on top of the film, to let you in on what the characters were reading as they read it. Occasionally the longer emails were also voiced over by the reading character, as though they were reading it in their head. Throughout the movie these effects never felt forced or out-of-place, and I felt they accurately portrayed what it is like to have a silent conversation about something truly exciting.

Narration

Narration in a book is a very different communication method than in a movie. I went into the movie expecting a lot of voice-over narration from Hazel, both based on her narration in the trailer and based on the difficulty I foresaw in trying to maintain John Green’s distinctive voice in a visual medium. And while there is some narration from Hazel in the movie, it’s used surprisingly sparingly, and always in appropriate spots. The movie begins with Hazel’s voice-over narrating about how there are different ways to tell sad stories, and how she didn’t want to sugar-coat it because “that’s not the truth.” I began to notice that Hazel’s narration would take over whenever she got to a point in the story that was difficult for her to relive; specifically because what happened next was painful or didn’t fit into that “sugar-coated” mold. It was the truth, and so she had to tell it, but she couldn’t bear to actually relive it with dialogue and sound effects, so we get her narration over the visuals of the event, usually with musical accompaniment or blurred and muffled sounds.

Visual Storytelling – Direction

I was also struck by the subtlety of a lot of the visual storytelling and direction in the movie. Without spoilers, here are a couple of examples. Early in the story, mutual friend Isaac is slighted and gets really, really angry. Augustus tells him he needs to break something, and offers up his wall of basketball trophies. What follows, in the book, is a relatively serious conversation between Hazel and Augustus peppered with the occasional moment of Isaac breaking something thrown in. The whole sequence is very funny in the book, and I was eager to see how it would play out in the movie. I was not disappointed – the sequence is made even funnier in the movie via a classic case of upstaging. The director chose to shoot this sequence with Hazel and Augustus in the foreground, in focus, and Isaac blurry in the background, yelling and smashing things and just generally drawing focus away from the actual plot progression – in the funniest way possible. The visual nature of the movie medium allowed both occurrences to happen simultaneously, which just enhanced the comedy of the moment.

A second, more serious example, occurs later in the movie. As the story progresses, Hazel’s character arc is one of acceptance; learning that she doesn’t have to be afraid of getting close to others, and that even though she knows her days are numbered, she should still go out and live them. The movie depicts this beautifully, and so subtly that I almost didn’t notice it. Hazel carries her oxygen tank in a little rolling backpack, which she habitually drags behind her everywhere she goes. Beginning at a very important point in the story, however (no spoilers!), we start to see Hazel carrying her oxygen tank more often as a backpack, literally shouldering her burden rather than dragging it behind her. Carrying her tank on her back leaves her hands free and allows her more mobility, signifying her newfound resolve to deal with her situation practically and live her life fully. This beautiful bit of symbolism is a great example of how well the movie portrays the thoughts and philosophies of the book through its own particular medium.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I highly recommend it. But read the book first!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *