Film adaptations of books that I care about tend to get me grouchy. What bothers me is not necessarily the quality of the film itself, but the prospect that many people will see the film without reading the book. They may encounter a story conveyed at the expense of some of the book’s greatest strengths, such as the inner lives of characters, or the narrator’s voice.
That said, film adaptations are also occasions for people to learn about or revisit the source material. As it happens, 2015 is a banner year for works of Jewish interest brought to the big screen. I thought it fitting to highlight the books behind these films, which can make for some very fulfilling summer reading.
“Woman in Gold,” with an extraordinary performance by Helen Mirren, was released on DVD this month. Although it was not truly an adaptation of journalist Anne-Marie O’Connor’s “The Lady in Gold,” I encourage fans of the film to read the 2012 book.
While the film concentrates chiefly on the legal battle over the Austrian government’s refusal to return confiscated artwork to relatives of Adele Bloch-Bauer — the subject and owner of Gustav Klimt’s most celebrated painting — the book moves further back in time. It explores the vanished world of Vienna’s Jewish haute-bourgeoisie at the turn of the century, including the opportunities these Jews created for avant-garde artists. O’Connor then traces the experience of the same Jewish families upon the rise of the Nazis and the German annexation of Austria in 1938, before chronicling the extraordinary legal saga.
Eran Riklis’ new film, “A Borrowed Identity,” which recently opened in the Bay Area, is based on Sayed Kashua’s 2002 debut novel, “Dancing Arabs,” one of the first works of fiction to be written in Hebrew by an Arab author. Composed when Kashua, who is now best known as the writer of the popular and controversial Israeli television sitcom “Arab Labor,” was in his mid-20s, the novel gives voice to his alienation as he straddles Israel’s Jewish and Arab worlds. Largely autobiographical, it follows a boy from Tira, an Arab village in central Israel, who receives a scholarship to an elite, mostly Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem, and ultimately feels like an outsider in both communities. It is a particularly good book for Jewish readers unfamiliar with the experience of Israel’s Arab minority, who account for 20 percent of the nation’s population.
Amos Oz’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” also published in 2002, is not the sort of book that would strike me as fodder for the big screen, but Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman felt differently and bought the movie rights. The resulting film, in which Portman both stars and makes her debut as a director, just had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
Perhaps the best-selling Israeli book in history (it has been translated into nearly 30 languages), this is a dense and demanding work with many rewards for the reader. It offers a vivid illustration of Jerusalem during the end of the British Mandate period and the beginning of Israeli statehood. It presents a loving picture of the last generation of East European polyglot Jewish intellectuals and ideologues. It paints a powerful psychological portrait of Oz’s mother, who struggled with depression. And it is foremost a portrait of the artist as a young man — the sensitive boy who endures the suicide of his mother when he is 12 years old, leaves Jerusalem for a kibbutz two years later and swaps the surname Klausner for Oz (the Hebrew word for strength), developing into one of Israel’s most significant writers.
The British film “Suite Française” has minimal Jewish content, but its background is remarkable. Irene Nemirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 and moved with her Jewish family as a teen to Paris, where she eventually became a moderately successful writer. Leaving Paris for a village in Vichy, France, following the German invasion, she still felt some sense of security, having converted to Catholicism in 1939. However, she was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where she and her husband both perished.
Nemirovsky had left behind a suitcase whose contents remained unexplored. When her daughter Denise finally went through her mother’s effects half a century later and discovered the manuscripts her mother was working on during World War II, she arranged for their publication. “Suite Française” consists of two novellas (Nemirovsky did not live to complete her planned series of five) that follow a number of French families during and after the German takeover, both in Paris and in a small village. It became a best-seller upon its release in 2004, valued as a rare case of World War II fiction written “in real time” — as history was unfolding.
Also due in theaters this year is “Septembers of Shiraz,” adapted from Dalia Sofer’s fine 2007 debut novel on the excruciating experience of a wealthy Tehran Jewish family in the aftermath of Iran’s Islamic revolution.
The harrowing novel follows jeweler Isaac Amin as he is arrested, imprisoned and tortured, along with a motley assortment of prisoners — some persecuted as political dissidents and some in prison because of their embrace of Western values and culture. Meanwhile, Isaac’s wife and daughter see their lives turned upside down, while his son is in New York experiencing his own maturation, in blissful ignorance of what is happening to the rest of his family. The novel succeeds at balancing the political and the personal. It conveys the brutality of the revolution while also invoking the injustices that occurred under the Shah. At the same time, it builds complex characters and looks into their hearts — particularly in the case of Isaac and his wife, who are led by circumstances to examine their disappointments with themselves and their marriage.
I wish you happy viewing and happy reading.
Howard Freedman is the director of the Jewish Community Library, a project of Jewish LearningWorks, in San Francisco. All books mentioned in this column may be borrowed from the library.
“The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” by Anne-Marie O’Connor (370 pages, Vintage)
“Dancing Arabs” by Sayed Kashua (244 pages, Grove)
“A Tale of Love and Darkness” by Amos Oz (560 pages, Houghton Mifflin)
“Suite Française” by Irene Nemirovsky (448 pages, Vintage)
“The Septembers of Shiraz” by Dalia Sofer (368 pages, HarperCollins)