Based on a True Story? Irish Autobiographies Adapted for Film by Claire Lynch (University of Oxford)
This image of mid-twentieth century Ireland embodied in the themes of emigration, cultural isolation, economic depression, literary censorship and religious conservatism have become a fixed concept in the collective imaginative and cultural production. At the start of the twenty-first century, far from seeking to exorcise such associations, Joe Cleary has noted that "the period is repeatedly evoked because it serves as the definitive image of the anti-modern which a modernizing Ireland needed both to define itself against and to transcend" (114). In other words, maintaining an image of "Irishness" which conforms to these themes is increasingly significant, thus the further divorced they become from the present reality. Roy Foster has observed that
Sometimes it is hard to avoid the feeling that the new, modernized, liberated Irish consciousness feels a sneaking nostalgia for the verities of the old victim-culture: which was also, in its way, a culture of superiority. (xv)
This "nostalgia" has proved extremely marketable and continues to be expressed in self-consciously modern artistic forms, most notably in film.
In spite of the obvious fascination in Ireland's recent past shown by filmmakers, it is almost impossible to find a satisfactory definition for the term "Irish Film." In his important work Irish Filmography, Kevin Rockett notes that of over 2,000 feature films produced with an Irish theme world-wide since the beginnings of the cinema, less than 200 have been made in Ireland itself and most of these only in the last fifteen years or so (510). Yet, whether the on-screen influence of high-profile Irish actors or off-screen production input are taken as definitive, many film historians have observed the role of Ireland and Irishness in the international cinematic vocabulary. Ireland's disproportionate status in the international film industry and the academic field of film studies is not purely providential. An amendment to the Finance Act in 1983 combined with the potential of the natural landscape for filming on location saw an upsurge in Irish production (Flynn 149). The benefit of such investments began to be reaped around the early 1990s with Peter Sheridan's award winning My Left Foot taken to be the leading example. What is significant about the type of film that heralded this success and what forms of Ireland and Irishness did they represent to an international audience?
The adaptation of Irish literature to film has produced many interesting results, yet autobiography in particular continues to demand a high level of both critical and popular attention. The direct adaptation of any written text onto the screen raises a number of critical issues, Andrew Butler claims that
Adaptations come in three broad kinds: faithful translations from page to screen, unfaithful adaptations where things are changed for no real reason, and adaptations that offer a commentary on the original material. (32)
In the process of adapting from page to screen, Louis Gianetti observes that the "real problem" is "not how to reproduce the content of a literary work (an impossibility), but how close" to "remain to the raw data of the subject matter. This degree of fidelity is what determines the three types of adaptations: the loose, the faithful, and the literal" (421). The sliding-scale of adaptation formats proposed here is echoed by numerous film theorists but is crucially flawed by the assumption that literary adaptation is necessarily from fiction to film. Film studies is an area very comfortable with genre, dividing works into the categories of Comedy, Crime, Disaster, Epic, Erotic, Gangster, Horror, Science Fiction, War, Western, and so on with ease. Yet when it comes to the adaptation of literary works, the existence of forms of writing other than the novel is frequently overlooked. I suggest that the adaptation of autobiography involves a somewhat different process in order for the film to be successful and to ask why Irish autobiographies have so often been identified as having the potential for this. As Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen have identified
When movies and life come together, the marriage is often a troubled one. […] Yet those five magical words -'based on a true story' - manage to confer something special upon any movie that invokes them. There's a reason why eighteen Best Picture Academy Award winners have been based on true stories. Inspirational stories are more inspiring when they're true. (xv)
Vankin and Whalen go on to note that in the case of film "some stories are 'truer' than others" and identify the "flexible yardstick" with which Hollywood measures a film's relationship to reality ranging from the solid authority of a film "based on a true story," on to the mediocre sounding "based on real events," to the lowly and unconvincing "inspired by actual events" which they wryly observe as "not so much an assertion as a disclaimer" (xvi).
The three Irish autobiographies adapted for film examined here fall at various points on the spectrum. My Left Foot, Angela's Ashes and Borstal Boy will be used as case studies to interrogate some of the important issues of adapting personal narratives into a public spectacle according to academic readings, professional reviewers and quantitative values such as box office success.
I. My Left Foot
Jim Sheridan's film adaptation of Christy Brown's 1954 autobiography released in 1989 remains the standard by which other Irish autobiographical adaptations are judged. The success of both the film and the book must be attributed in part to the unique manner in which they were produced. Brown's autobiography tells of his frustration due to the physical limitations caused by cerebral palsy and his gradual and arduous development as he learns to write, to hold a pencil, and to type on a typewriter using only his left foot. The film boasted an all-star cast of leading Irish actors including Cyril Cusack and Fiona Shaw. It won huge critical acclaim winning BAFTAS for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis and Ray McAnally respectively, and five OSCAR nominations including wins for Brenda Fricker as Best Supporting Actress and Daniel Day Lewis as Best Actor.
A large element of the film's popular success must be attributed to the general admiration of leading actor Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in re-creating the bodily movements associated with cerebral palsy. His absorption in the role is legendary; after spending months in preparation, Day-Lewis remained 'in character' throughout the entire production and as one reviewer claims
Day Lewis' re-creation of writer/painter Christy Brown's condition is so precise, so detailed and so matter-of-fact that it transcends the carping about casting an actor without cerebral palsy. He couldn't have done it better.
The film was an enormous personal accomplishment for Day-Lewis and also for the Irish film industry. As Arthur Flynn remarks the double success at the Academy Awards "was a remarkable achievement for the IR£1.7M budget film which was to receive an enormous box-office boost with world-wide receipts estimated at IR£20,000,000" (144). Figures like these are often cited as evidence of a definitive boom in the Irish film industry during this period, yet as Joan Hill wisely notes in the 1994 book Border Crossing: Film in Ireland, Britain and Europe "more than 60% of its budget was invested by British television" problematizing its definition as an "Irish Film" (132). Such observations are significant when we consider the international audience that these films attract and the far reaching impact of the image of Ireland they represent. This issue of international funding and influence continues to be a central concept in the next example, Angela's Ashes.
II. Angela's Ashes
Adapted, directed and produced by Alan Parker the 1999 film "based upon the book" by Frank McCourt faced stiff competition with the enormous popular success of the original source material. Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1997, McCourt's book subtitled "A Memoir of a Childhood" has attracted praise and abuse in equal measure being famously described by Roy Foster as "monotonous," "repetitive" and "perfunctory" (168). Within the same analysis Foster acknowledges that McCourt's first book "transcended bestsellerdom to become a publishing phenomenon - a million-seller, a prize-gatherer, a cult-former, a legend still ensconced in the hardback charts when it went straight to number one in paperback" emphasising its undeniable attraction to the film industry and the potential for a colossal audience (165).
The numerous criticisms directed at McCourt's autobiographies relate to the questioning of his authenticity or accuse him of exaggerating the hardships endured during his stereotypical "miserable Irish catholic childhood". Yet, it is interesting to consider exactly what it is about this portrait of 1930s Limerick, sodden with rain and saturated with infant mortality that made it such a success. Susan Tetlow Harrington's article in the Literature/Film Quarterly claims that
Parker presents a picture of Limerick life in the thirties and forties which ultimately both confirms and completes McCourt's book. In so doing he constructs a series of cinematic images that probably coincide with many of those that readers of the book had already stored in their heads. No wonder this movie has found a following. (58)
The sense of inevitable success for the adaptation is echoed by director Alan Parker who demonstrates an awareness of the precise nature of the task when he says, "it's not just a book we're talking about; it's a man's life."
For all its efforts to become an authentic period piece, the film version of Angela's Ashes inevitably suffers through its inability to capture the one truly accomplished and defining narrative technique of the book: seeing everything from the child's perspective. Martin McLoone describes this predicament as follows
Frank McCourt's memoir of the poverty of de Valera's Ireland, on which the film was based, is wry, ironic and bitter and its readability depends upon this authorial voice which at all stages in its horrific narrative mediates the experience for the reader. We can survive or endure the narrative because this voice fills in for us a contemporary register. (2:182)
The film uses a variety of techniques in an attempt to recreate the perspective of McCourt's original narrator such as an opening voiceover and the use of three actors to denote the different stages of childhood; however, as McLoone acknowledges
The film lacks the bitter and desperate anger of the source material […] It makes little connection to contemporary Ireland, then, because it has no real emotional impact, one way or another. It is a series of pretty pictures of Irish poverty, devoid of any kind of engagement - an efficient and mechanical piece of film-making that says nothing more than 'this was in the book, here it is now up on the big screen. (2:182)
Unlike the other two texts examined here (which waited between forty and fifty years to be adapted), Angela's Ashes was adapted for film almost immediately, within three years of its publication. As a consequence of this proximity the film and the book are inextricably linked by overlapping audiences who are liable to see the film as an extension of their reading experience.
III. Borstal Boy
My final example, Peter Sheridan's 2000 film Borstal Boy "inspired by the book by Brendan Behan" and bearing only the slightest of resemblances to the 1958 autobiography is a clear example of what Butler would describe as an "unfaithful" adaptation. Contemporary reviews are accurately scathing of a film that does not appear to use the original as a "point of departure" or source of influence, but rather to take a classic of modern Irish literary autobiography and seek to gain recognition simply by using the same title. In a 2002 review, Andrew O'Hehir comically laments the transformation by saying
Still, one might wish that Sheridan and co-writer Nye Heron had made another choice besides rendering Behan's story virtually unrecognizable. I mean, it's been a few years since I read Borstal Boy, but I do not recall the bisexual love triangle, the rugby match between the juvenile inmates and the local British Army lads or the drag production of The Importance of Being Earnest.
A sentiment echoed by Jeffrey M. Anderson who observes that "Sheridan scrubs and polishes away anything slightly resembling an edge." Interestingly, the only favourable reviews of this film are to be found by those classifying it as a gay movie admiring the open displays of adolescent homosexual desire which are crudely and opportunistically inserted by the filmmakers as a poor substitute for the understated and moving dependence between the boys implied in the book.
Whilst it is easy to identify differences between a film and the book that inspired it, and even easier to discredit it because of them, there are some theorists who urge us to see these elements as the very essence of film adaptation. In Geoffrey Wagner's 1975 analysis he claims that a poor adaptation "cannot be indicated as a violation of a literary original since the director has not attempted (or only minimally attempted) to reproduce the original" (227). Wagner's reading is interesting as it posits such a treatment as preferable as it can truly be said to have created a distinct and new text.
A final question remains: is the case of autobiographical adaptation different? When approaching a personal account of a real life by the real person who experienced it, is the filmmaker entitled to make changes in the same way he would with a novel? To put it simply: yes. Through the act of publication the autobiographical subject becomes the equivalent of any literary protagonist and is therefore subject to the same system of deconstruction and interpretation. Similarly, the context of the narrative, the place and time in which the recalled events occurred must also be expected to face interpretation. It is interesting to observe that the three filmmakers whilst fundamentally disagreeing on the method of adapting autobiography for film often overlap in their representation of mid-twentieth century Ireland. It is also important to remember that all three films discussed here are attempting to simultaneously provide two versions of Ireland's recent past: the first, as it was viewed in the present tense by the original author, and the second, inevitably distorted by the screenwriter in order to meet the expectations of the audience and financiers.
McLoone has observed that the huge financial success of My Left Foot "was seen at the time as vindication of the government's strategy of favouring the commercial sector" whilst ominously noting that there was "a price to pay for this type of financing." He writes
The fact remains that such financing inevitably involves compromises in the style and theme of the films. The danger is that, to attract financial support, such films propose a view of Ireland that is already familiar to international funders and which funders in turn believe audiences are likely to recognise and identify with. Ultimately, they offer conservative images of Ireland that do not challenge existing cinematic traditions. (2:115)
This approach perhaps lacks artistic integrity, but is arguably an unavoidable compromise for a film industry still partially dependent upon external funding and international audiences to ensure the success of a feature film. This focus on a universally acceptable and predictable image of the past emphasises the market-forces at work in the adaptation process in which the ultimate aim is to attract the largest possible audience.
In their original written form, My Left Foot, Angela's Ashes and Borstal Boy share a number of narrative and contextual elements, yet the directors of each of the film adaptations adopted varied approaches to converting them into a cinematic format. In attracting American funding and distribution all three cases benefited from the authority and prestige awarded to a non-fiction piece and the attractiveness of a clear historical context to producers. But, as readers and viewers we are forced to ask whether the commercial expectations of the film industry preclude the fundamental elements which comprise an autobiography. Vankin and Whalen have argued that
Hollywood's compulsion to hammer life's complexities into a screenplay structure with 'character arcs', 'turning points', and 'inciting incidents' often leeches a true story of the very authenticity that made it compelling in the first place. (xxvi)
Such an analysis urges us to return to the title of this paper and examine, in conclusion, what is really meant by the term "based on a true story." Do we expect the impossible of a film adaptation?
George Bluestone observed that cinemagoers make certain allowances and compromises which they consider reasonable, such as expecting some detail to be cut in order to fit the shorter time span of a film, but goes on to note that there is a lack of awareness that changes are inevitable the moment one abandons the linguistic for the visual medium. The core of his theory is an unambiguous division between the book and the film as he states that "the film is a different thing in the same sense that a historical painting becomes a different thing from the historical event which it illustrates" (5). Whilst this clear distinction between the two forms is useful, more recent critics such as Mireia Aragay have wisely observed that film relies on language, just as literature depends on imagery, emphasising the inexplicable link between the forms and the potential for film and literature to co-exist in a mutually beneficial relationship (3).
As the three examples discussed here have shown, this relationship achieves variable success. Whilst Irish autobiographies have frequently seemed attractive to investors as sources for adaptation, the films have often failed to mesh the incongruous format of personal experience in a public framework. In particular, the contrast between mid-twentieth century Ireland as experienced by the original author and the complex and constantly reinforced mental image held by the twenty-first century cinema audience. It is this aspect of adaptation, from the past to the present which will set the terms of debate in the field of Irish autobiographical films. As Martin McLoone suggests
The final irony, then, of film scholarship in Ireland, and the much larger cultural discourse of which it is a part, is that its concerns with nationality, definitions of Irishness, and identity no longer seem like the archaic lingerings of a pre-modern era, as it has sometimes been characterized. On the contrary, these questions now seem to be at the very cutting edge of contemporary cultural debate. (514)
Work Cited
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