Toronto Dispatch. 6.

If the argument is that all film is an adaptation - an adaptation of emotion, reality, humanity, personality and imagination - that would make the Toronto International Film Festival a giant adaptation of life and all its many angles. Some films are more clear-cut than others, easily labeled "adaptation" or "biopic," and there seem to be a lot of them this year. The best of the bunch is Bennett Miller's Capote, which is also one of the best films (if not the best film) that I've seen at the festival, and many folks I've been yapping with at screenings agree with me. Capote is an adaptation of a biography that is a telling of an event (Truman Capote's researching and writing the seminal In Cold Blood) that was based on another event (the killings and the convictions at the core of the book.)

Never mind that the film is superbly acted. Can-do-no-wrongs Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener make no false moves in their portrayals of Truman Capote and his childhood friend, researcher and author Nelle Harper Lee. Yeah, I didn't know either of these people, but Hoffman is channeling something here that is beyond anything I've seen him do previously; a full-bodied adaptation of another persona. (He was also good as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous, but only onscreen for ten minutes max.) But on top of the acting, Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman craft each scene with Swiss watch-like precision which keeps characterization in line while at the same time allowing the actors enough flex to bring Capote and Lee to life onscreen.

Many films at Toronto are adapting personas, such as Walk the Line (Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash), Alexander Sokurov's The Sun (Issey Ogata as Emperor Hirohito), Mrs. Harris (Ben Kingsley as murdered diet guru Herman Tanower), Takeshis' (Takeshi Kitano as himself X 2) and The Notorious Bettie Page (Gretchen Mol as iconic pinup girl Bettie Page).

I spoke to Mary Harron, director of The Notorious Bettie Page, about how one goes about adapting a celebrity's persona to the screen. "You approach it like a documentary," she explained (both she and Bennett Miller are documentary filmmakers as well). She did the research and spread her net wide. "You want a picture from different perspectives - to see it through a prism rather than a single lens." For Mol's joyful yet melancholic performance as the pinup who at once conveyed innocence and naughtiness in a pucker of her lips (and perhaps more challengingly, with whips and chains), she studied the images and film clips of Page. Lili Taylor, who plays photographer Paula Klaw, talked directly to the person she was portraying. Harron herself spoke to people who knew Page and came to the conclusion that "no one quite knew her" (which is a telling comment, given the enigmatic and disparate sides of Page as played out in the film) and that in "real life, the sources never end." When asked about adapting the novel American Psycho, she commented that it is "easier to have a contained text. A novel has a self contained world and the answer is in the pages."

Films that go looking for answers in the pages include David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (graphic novel), Mike Mills's Thumbsucker (novel), Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist, Tsui Hark's Seven Swords (wuxia novel), Curtis Hanson's In Her Shoes (novel), Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto (novel), English lit major requirements Beowulf & Grendel, L'Enfer (based in part on Dante's Inferno), Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (Laurence Sterne) and yet another version of Pride and Prejudice.

Some answers within the text are hard to find, it seems, even if the person who wrote the text then wrote the screenplay and was then cast in a lead role. I'm talking about Shopgirl, the film based on Steve Martin's novella. Austere and airless, the film suffers from its attempt to portray its unfulfilled characters as sparsely as they are in book form. Jason Schwartzman is the film's bright spot as the clueless and aimless Jeremy who clumsily attempts to woo the depressive Mirabelle (Claire Danes) but is then banished to the sidelines when millionaire Ray Porter (Steve Martin) swoops in. They are troubled beings on the page to be sure, but as barely living and breathing onscreen characters, they are even harder to understand and sympathize with. (Confusingly, Ray is also the narrator of the film. Or is it supposed to be the author, Martin?)  Perhaps the Shopgirl team should have thought to cast Philip Seymour Hoffman as Ray instead of Martin, who adapted his own character twice over.

Posted by dwhudson at September 15, 2005 1:44 AM