Literary filmmaking, Bigger & Bigger!

Combine two of my great passions in life ­— film and literary fiction — and you know I’ll be there.

Ever since 2013, when I first read Felisa Batacan’s Smaller and Smaller Circles, I’ve hailed it to anyone who would listen as a crime fiction must-read. Here finally was a “noir” novel set in Manila, and written by a Filipino (UP graduate, no less), that actually worked!

While the unsolved grisly serial murders set in Payatas in 1997 were dramatically rendered, it was the chemistry between the two Jesuits (one a forensic anthropologist, the other a psychologist) that made this novel take flight. The older priest would “listen” to the stories emanating from the remains of the young male victims, while the profiling of the perpetrator would be the domain of the younger priest. And when you added the scathing social and political commentary — incompetent law enforcers, pedophile priests and grandstanding local politicians — that peppered the novel, I was over the moon.

And now, we have a film adaptation directed by Raya Martin, starring Nonie Buencamino and Sid Lucero. It is wonderful to find literary works of a contemporary, urban nature becoming source material for Filipino filmmakers. And I say this guardedly as in my experience, rare is the time that I’ve seen a mystery/crime novel I admired make a successful transition to film. Ellroy’s LA Confidential was great, but let’s not talk about Nesbo’s The Snowman or how Le Carre’s work was a hit-and-miss when brought to cinematic life. At times, television does a better job. Witness how Le Carre’s The Night Manager and Larsson’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo were so much better as mini-series.

As Le Carre himself professed, when you yield the film rights to a production company, the most you can wish for is that the arc of your novel is still faithfully rendered, but to expect them to cram in two hours what you expounded on for over 300 pages is a foolhardy notion. At best, even if not quite the novel, you hope for the film to breathe and have a distinct life of its own. This certainly was the case with Puzo’s The Godfather, Groom’s Forrest Gump and even the Jack Reacher films.

To its credit, the filmmaking team of Smaller and Smaller Circles offers a product that is earnest, honest and true to the intent of Batacan. But to expect them to recapture all the moments that had me gripped while reading the novel the first time, is to ask for the moon and more. To be frank, I had minor issues with the pacing, the screenplay and the editing but I totally applaud the decision to bring this wonderful work to the screen. And if the release will drive people to seek out the novel and read it for the first time, then it has more than justified its existence. For the novel deserves all the awards it has reaped. Batacan was at the premiere I attended, and if there was anyone I wanted to have a photo with, hands down, it would have been her!

Novels of exemplary writing prowess!

A timeless reading list

Here are three novels that are just the answer if you’re looking for entertaining reads that manage to also take on weighty subjects. Haig dissects “living forever,” while Sullivan gifts us with a literary thriller. And Wilson’s is a joyful exercise in the absurd via an actual historical incident.

How To Stop Time by Matt Haig (available on Amazon.com) Author of The Radleys and The Humans, Haig has always skillfully walked the tightrope, balancing between pithy social commentary and smart humor. In his latest, he takes on the time travel/zelig genre by creating a protagonist who ages very, very slowly. It’s anageria, and Tom is some 400 years old, born in 1581. Like a Dorian Gray who never ages, Tom is prone to existential dilemmas, as he has loved (Rose), and has a daughter (Marion) whom he has not seen for centuries ­— she ran away as a child. With episodes that include the likes of Shakespeare, Captain Cook and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Haig constantly entertains, while making “immortality” food for thought. Filled to the brim with wonderful situations and circumstances, this is about what it means to be alive.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan (available on Amazon.com) I’ve always been partial to crime mysteries, and when the author combines it with a love for books, I’m hooked. Set in Denver, this first novel by Sullivan kicks off with a suicide at a bookstore. A young vagrant/ex-con, Joey sets off in motion a series of shattering discoveries by dying and being discovered by Lydia, an employee at the bookstore. With secrets of her own in her past, Lydia discovers in the coat pocket of Joey a photograph taken from a birthday party when she was a little girl, flanked by two of her best friends back then. Why that photo should be there, and her own saga of being the sole survivor of a bloody triple murder of a family — she was sleeping over that night with one of her best friends form part of the mystery she has to unravel.

The Zoo by Christopher Wilson (available on Amazon.com) A new and worthy addition to the list of unique child narrators would be Yuri Zipit in this latest from Christopher Wilson. If in the past we had The Book Thief and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, we now have Yuri as our guide to the bizarre last weeks of Stalin. While the graphic novel The Death of Stalin centered on the in-fighting and mad scramble for power as Stalin lay on his death bed, here, we have all that plus the skewed perspective of a child suffering from traumatic brain damage, hired to be Stalin’s food taster. With Yuri interacting with the “doubles” employed, and seeking his father, Chief Veterinarian as the zoo, and the one first brought to check on Stalin because of his distrust of regular doctors, there is much of the surreal and absurd for us to enjoy. Wonderful read!