When adapting a novel into a film, it is not often that the author has plenty of creative control, let alone a key role in its filmmaking. Fortunately for Emma Donoghue, she was able to write a screenplay for the 2015 drama/thriller Room, released five years after her novel by the same name. Considering this privilege, she was able to collaborate with director Lenny Abrahamson, making the adaption as accurate and similar to the novel as possible. Films likе The Dark Tower and The Circlе are examples of adaptions that failed to gain critics’ approval. The Shining, although approved by critics, did not receive a nod by Stephen King for years. In the film Room, the result was not copy and paste. The novel included copious amounts of descriptive language, an extension of certain plot moments, extra characters, and other factors that the film ultimately had to leave out. Even though it would seem these decisions were out of Donoghue’s control, she decided what was best, for the sake of limitations. Donoghue and Abrahamson consolidated the film into under 2 hours, as opposed to her 10-hour, 321-page novel. To compensate for the loss of content, cinematography became a significant aspect of the process. The setting, for the most part, remains identical to the novel, as well as the main characters. The film utilizes symbols to avoid spoon-feeding filmgoers. Had the novel not tackled the theory of realism, the film might have been an example of full-on formalism. Despite Emma Donoghue overseeing her novel’s transition to the big screen, the film still manages to stray from the source material.
Room tells the story of a mother and her child, making a transition from being held in captivity for seven years in a tight-spaced shed to reuniting with family and taking in the wonders of the world that were kept from them. The film follows three characters: Ma, Jack, and Old Nick. Ma, played by Brie Larson, is a victim of daily rape since having been abducted as a teenager. Jack, played by Jacob Tremblay, is Ma’s child, born in a literal, small world. He is easily “amazed and surprised by the capacity of lifeless things to expand their own life and to help them survive” (Hétu 160). Ma helps carry out their routine, as well as teach him to the best of her ability. She does this with the hope of eventually escaping. Old Nick, played by Sean Bridgers, is the rapist, abductor, and Jack’s father.
Nancy, played by Joan Allen, and Robert Newsome, played by William H. Macy, are Ma’s parents. They act as secondary characters and are involved in the latter half of the film. Ma and Jack stay at Nancy’s house, as Robert and Nancy divorced a while ago. Leo, who was called Steppa in the novel, is the stepfather of Ma (Joy). “The cutting and condensing can begin with elements the novel carries at length and in abundance: exposition, settings, characters, scenes, dialogue, and subplots” (Desmond and Hawkes 86). Unlike the film, the novel states that Ma and Jack have their own place to live upon returning. “Guess what, Jack, you and me have our own apartment” (Donoghue 300). This is one of the major changes, cutting out the events that took place in their apartment. Desmond and Hawkes signify that “the adapter often drops unnecessary scenes that do not advance the plot or are not essential in revealing or developing a character” (89). Ma and Jack are developed in the film regardless of the dropped moments, resulting in them being unnecessary.
During Jack’s time in Room, he has not been able to experience what Outside is like. This detail is the same in both mediums. On the other hand, Ma’s character in the novel takes a while to think of her escape plan. In the film, Ma tries to convince Jack that the world is bigger than he knows and is already set on escaping. She still has to wait until he is the right age to comprehend it. She tells him, “Jack, the world is so big. It’s so big, you wouldn’t even believe it (Room 00:30:35-00:30:42).
After finally being rescued, Jack has to adjust to his new life while Ma struggles to cope with the trauma she experienced. Jack is unaware that Room is traumatic. He says, “Ma was in a hurry to go boing up to heaven, but she forgot me, Dumbo Ma” (Room 01:36:23-01:26:28). When he was first reunited with Ma, he asks, “Can we go to bed [in Room]?” (00:59:32-00:59:35). Both mediums depict their struggles, altering neither of their mindsets.
Ma and Jack may have remained the same, except for Ma being changed to 17 at the time of her abduction instead of 19, but some characters did not even make it to the screen. “Usually, the adapter has no choice but to reduce a novel's cast of characters because of film length” (Desmond and Hawkes 89). Donoghue decided to remove Dr. Clay, Noreen, the nurse that cares for Ma and Jack at the hospital, Ma’s brother, Paul; Ma’s sister-in-law, Deanna; Paul and Deanna’s daughter, Bronwyn. The characters were not a salient part of the novel, so keeping them in the script would have made the film longer.
The setting of both works are parallel, but some sequences were also cut for time. The story takes place in an 11x11 garden shed located behind Nick’s house in the backyard. For this particular part of the film, the shed is the only set used. The mise en scene includes a closet Jack refers to as Wardrobe, Lamp, Door, Sink, Boat, and other objects. Danny Cohen, the cinematographer for the film, stays consistent with the camera distance. Many of the shots in the room are extreme close-ups, mainly to show the objects Jack interacts with.
As Abrahamson moves the plot forward, Donoghue removes the detail of Jack getting his hand bitten by Ajeet’s dog. Ajeet is the bystander that saves Jack. This shortens the sequence. In the novel, Jack says, “I’m running till I’m nearly at them and the dog barks and jumps up and eats me” (Donoghue 141). Instead, the bystander almost immediately confronts Old Nick and perceives him as a threat in the film. The novel describes Jack being on the ground much longer, as the bystander tends to Jack’s injuries.
By the time the police arrive, the novel does not say that Jack gets into the cruiser until Officer Oh asks the first batch of questions (Donoghue 145). After the second batch of questions is asked, the film picks up at that point. (Room 00:53:16-00:56:40). The dialogue in both the film and the novel are very similar. The officer in the driver’s seat says Jack might be in a cult because of his long hair. This dialogue is kept.
Another setting of the novel that was cut was the precinct. The story takes place only in the hospital during Ma and Jack’s initial rescue sequence. To create a film accessible for a general audience, moments from the novel had to be left out. The film never displays Jack going to the mall with Paul and Diana like the novel did (Donoghue 247). It also never indicates Jack eavesdropped on his grandma’s book club (Donoghue 279).
The entire film takes place in real locations, such as Nancy’s house and Room. The film sticks to realism by introducing Ma and giving her a chance to expound her perspective. In an interview with Tom Ue, Emma Donoghue answers questions about her novel. She said that “I tried to keep Room balanced on a knife-edge throughout, almost agonizingly ambivalent, in fact. Whenever I found that Ma and Jack were being too sweet, I made them cranky, and vice versa.” She later adds, “Compared with screenplays, for instance, novels have almost no rules” (Ue 102). This implies that limitations are apparent in the film. In reality, humans cannot hear what others are thinking, but they can hear what they are saying.
The film uses the cinematography aspect to convey what the characters see or feel, rather than using a plethora of voiceovers, as the book is dialogue-heavy, especially from Jack’s perspective. There are moments when the camera is mounted and it begins to pan from left to right or vice versa, giving a wide scope of the area. For instance, over halfway through the film (Room 01:07:56-01:08:01), the camera depicts Jack holding Ma’s hand in slow motion, walking through the hallways of the hospital. Ma’s facial expressions reflect her traumatizing experience. She has zero make-up and looks emotionally drained. Jack still wears the mask that was mentioned in the book (Donoghue 163). He wears it because of potential germs in the air he isn’t used to.
Another hospital scene’s composition depicts Jack in a cradle position, lying on the bed. The bed to his right is not made and the table behind him has his food. The audience can see what Jack is looking at (Room 01:05:33-01:05:37). Most movement of the camera is handheld. Two types of focuses are used in the depth of field: deep and rack focus. At the end of the film, Ma and Jack leave the shed and head back to the front of the house (Room 01:51:50-01:52:42). The focus rapidly changes from Ma’s face to Nancy’s (Room 01:33:30-01:33:38). This demonstrates how the characters see each other when they talk. Additionally, there are medium close-up shots of characters from head to shoulders and regular close-ups of only their heads. If the shot is focused on Ma, it represents Jack’s view of her. Cohen keeps the background out of focus, so Ma and Jack can employ the entire frame.
In one scene, Ma had just rolled Jack up in the rug she gave birth on (the film does not tell the audience this). As he plays dead, he is put into the back of Old Nick’s pickup truck. The audience sees Jack’s perspective from inside of Rug. He stays silent, but his heart races. His growing curiosity is shown through looking at the skylight and watching the fast-moving clouds while he rides in the bed of Old Nick’s truck (Room 00:50:15-00:50:30). There is shakiness when Jack jumps out of the bed of Truck and trips on the grass (Room 00:51:15-00:51:30). This conveys how Jack felt at that moment, as it was all happening so fast.
There are multiple kinds of angles that scenes are shot from. There are scenes where Jack is seen from an overhead angle, as well as shots from low angles that depict Jack’s point of view of the world. With this in mind, widescreen shots make Outside appear massive. The inclusion of a soft, bluish hue that is visible in almost every shot of the film creates an overall feeling of bare, coldness. This conveys that Ma sees the world as nearly colorless. There is also a bright, white light that contrasts, representing light at the end of a tunnel or hope (Room 00:38:03-00:38:24).
Lucia Lorenzi, a doctoral graduate at the University of British Columbia, notes that “this closing vignette illustrates one of the complexities that is negotiated throughout the novel, namely that Jack does not experience Room in the same way as Ma” (1). This same complexity is shown at the end of the film. The shots in the film offer different perspectives, a factor that drives the plot of the novel, as well as teaches a symbolic message.
The film uses symbolism more than the novel and does not hold back with the hints. Both Ma and Jack look through Skylight myriad times in the film. With Skylight, they can see a little bit of Outside, symbolizing their hope. However, that freedom is still inaccessible to them. Jack's hair can be a symbol as well: the hope he had while in Room. His hair is proof of his strength. In both the film and the novel, Jack decides to cut off his hair because he wants to give Ma hope; hope that she can achieve freedom and leave the hospital to be with him. Jack tells Nancy, “She needs my strength more than me” (Room 01:40:49-01:41:08). It is noteworthy that, in the film, Jack goes to Nancy and asks her to cut his hair. In the novel, Jack does not hesitate to do it himself, immediately grabbing a pair of scissors. Jack is a symbol of innocence and overall ignorance because he does not know what is out there (Room 00:16:17-00:16:50).
Freedom is the highlighted theme in the film and novel. It is also the goal for Ma and Jack. Abrahamson uses numerous devices to express this. For instance, Old Nick is a symbol of evil. It is because of him carrying out a devilish act, that a mother and her son cannot reach freedom. He tells Ma to keep silent until he shuts the door (Room 00:39:33-00:39:37), just like the novel. The film and novel share the same “interest in the possibility of reinventing oneself in a space where imagination and escape seem out of reach” (Hétu 160). In comparison, symbols in the film have to be found, whereas the novel tells you. Themes and symbols are just some of the aspects that are faithfully adapted for Donoghue’s body of work.
The realism theory in the film is paramount in the novel. Room is a grounded and realistic depiction of how someone held in captivity would not only react but survive. When using the camera to tell the story, there is “a minimum of interference and manipulation” from the artist, Danny Cohen (Giannetti 453). The idea of realism in cinema is that it is an “extension of photography and shares it with a pronounced affinity for recording the visible world around us” (Giannetti 453). Abrahamson refrains from using a lot of effects. He wishes for the film to be stripped down, and to not take away from the novel in that regard. In a journal written by Jack Smart, Abrahamson told him, “We felt it was important not to cheat” (35). The film does not use any noticeable CGI, if at all. Conversely, the thriller “favors realism as a style” (Giannetti 455). Realism is further explored when Old Nick’s darker side is exposed in the film and novel.
When Robert and Nancy are reunited with their daughter, they expose their true colors, making Ma feel guilty for her disappearance and kidnapping (Room 01:15:33-01:16:40). Robert neglects Jack for being born. Giannetti states that realism “insists that truth lies on the surface of life” and the artist “mirror[s] this surface” (455). Nancy asks Ma, “Do you think you’re the only one whose life was destroyed?” (Room 01:26:32-01:26:34). This shows that even though Nancy cares, she believes her own situation was just as worse.
The neorealism style is used by an “avoidance of neatly plotted stories” in the film (Giannetti 455). The plot is not very eventful or neat, other than the escape scene and the Ma’s suicide attempt. The neorealist film ends with Ma and Jack leaving Room again, this time with closure. This is reflected in the book.
Taking everything into account, Room’s adaption from novel to film was thought carefully overseen by its author. The identifiable qualities of the novel carried over into the film, leaving the story, at its core, unhindered. Ma and Jack’s bond remain intact. Desmond and Hawkes stress that the “American movie is directed at a much larger audience than the novel’s” and “filmmakers must keep mind what a mass audience understands and what it wants to see” (96). Abrahamson keeps the film’s setting parallel with the novel. Cohen can capture what the novel cannot through cinematography. Realism is explored in both mediums and prevents the adaptation from becoming one of the poorer examples in recent history. This could not have been accomplished if the adaptation was not faithfully based. Alternatively, it is impossible to avoid removing elements from an adaptation because “dropping some narrative elements is essential” (Desmond and Hawkes 86). For this reason, adjustments can make or break the result of a product.
