Anu Recommends #19
Book-to-screen adaptations: A Man Called Ove edition
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
It’s a shorter one today but I’ve got the debut of my book-to-screen adaptation series, inspired by finally watching A Man Called Otto (currently streaming on Netflix) with the parents last weekend.
But before that I’d like to shoutout fellow writer Shiza for finally creating a substack. You can find her at quillmistress@substack.com, so go show her some love.
Now onto Ove/Otto.
I didn’t get to A Man Called Ove until much later in my Fredrik Backman journey, by which time I was already a fan, so I can’t speak for those who meet the cantankerous Ove and the author for the very first time, but this is what I wrote when I was sifting through my thoughts after I’d turned the last page back then.
Imagine waking up every morning to be reminded anew of your grief. Imagine having to repeat the steps of daily life with that knowledge, one foot in front of the other, even as the smallest of memories pile up and block your vision. Imagine missing someone with an intensity you know was possible only because of that very someone.
They are why you go around the house adjusting the radiator just as they liked it, because it's been too long since you knew anything else. Anyone else. And it's inconceivable to you that they're just...gone. That the world can go on without their vibrancy and love when yours just abruptly stopped.
Imagine talking to that person just to fill the silence that they used to inhabit with their voice and their words even as you were content to sit in your own silence for the joy of hearing them speak and laugh. Oh that laugh that you can still hear, your heart clenching every single time until you wonder how it hasn't stopped beating yet.
Imagine losing the only person who ever understood you, and you, gasping, uncomprehending, expected to make sense of a world without them, holding on to words like "what if". Imagine hating that you're still breathing, that the grim reaper has passed you over and left you behind.
Ove has been a grumpy old man since the first day of second grade. He believes in right and wrong and lives a life by a code of rules and of things being just so. That he protects the softest of hearts is a secret he jealously guards, even more so now when his beloved wife, all the colour in his life, is gone. He has another secret. An act he keeps putting off, first through the meddling of the universe, later because he can't quite let go of something the knowledge of which has brought him the only comfort he's had since, even if he knows that he won't go through with it now.
This is the story of a life and a grieving man and a street of people whom you think you know but you don't, not really, and how sometimes you may think you know how something is going to end but what do they say about the best-laid plans?
This is where it all began for @backmansk, and everything I love about his writing is on full display. ❤
Otto, originally Ove, gets transplanted from Sweden to somewhere in the American Midwest in Marc Forster’s (of Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace, World War Z, and Christopher Robin fame) version. The book’s Parvaneh becomes Marisol (Mariana Treviño puts in a stunning performance as Otto’s new neighbour, and their blossoming friendship is the film’s fulcrum and heart). Other details shift, and we are without the charm of Fredrik Backman’s voice. But the appeal of the book lingers, despite some clunky narrative choices. We even get glimpses of Truman Hanks, Tom’s son, playing the younger Otto in gold-lit flashbacks.
Dad’s a fellow Backman fan courtesy me and my sister, while Mum waits eagerly and patiently for the day when she has a peaceful moment to pick up, and get lost in, a book—but all three of us found enjoyment in this Tom-Hanks-starring, quiet-but-often-veering-proudly-plunging-sentimental adaptation of Backman’s debut of a grumpy grump dealing with grief who is eventually healed by kindness and community.
Have you read the book or seen the film, or the 2015 Swedish adaptation?
What are your thoughts about book-to screen adaptations? Want me to share some more of my favourites—and those stories I wish they’d left alone?
Let me know all!
As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue :) Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.
Take care and see you next week!
Anu
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Great stuff, thanks Anushree. I've seen the original Swedish version with (very popular Swedish actor) Rolf Lassgård and I loved it. It's quintessentially Swedish by which I mean, gentle, thoughtful and very "human". The film also sort of delves into Swedish themes of loneliness and solitude and societal change (it helps that I speak fluent Swedish).
I've seen a few Swedish films that have had the Hollywood makeover and I'm often disappointed about what gets lost in the translation. Låt Den Rätte Komma In (Let the right one in) is another that just didn't carry the themes across the filmic divide. The original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as well.
As far as book to film. I suffer from a (probably unfair) tendency to think that screenplays work as films and books as books. But I am VERY willing to have this tendency dismantled. There's so much mind-space allocated to imagining whilst reading a book. Such a interactive experience between the author and the manuscript and the reader and the manuscript that creates such incredible internal landscapes. Film always feels more passive. As if we're being told about things rather than invited to a conversation. But as I say, I'm willing to be moved on from this rather arbitrary position.
Thanks for the great read :)
Loved your summary/description of the book, Anu. I read the book just a few days ago and I remember not liking Ove for the first quarter of the book. I knew what the author was trying to do, by revealing Ove's story (and character) in a Matroska-esque fashion, but even the initial reveals seemed to make him out to be the cliched "brooding and intense man". It is Backman's genius to take that cliche and uppend it before the reader can see it coming. Anyone who is left dry-eyed by the end, has my respect.
I felt the movie was, not to be impolite, pretty meh. It just doesn't seem to flow the way the book does and a few of the changes to the script felt jarring.
Have you seen the Anxious People adaptation? I was equally let down by that as well.
Oh, and taking off on Jonathan's comment, would love to read an issue on adapted movies that are better than the original books. I can envision swords being drawn on that one!