Competitive field this year, especially with previously assumed originals Moonlight and Loving being shifted (correctly, I believe) to the race for Best Adapted Screenplay. Here are the scribes who I feel did the best job at turning their non-cinematic source material into beautiful moving pictures:
ARRIVAL
(Eric Heisserer)
Ted Chiang's circular short story
seemed like an unfilmmable project to many readers, but Heisserer
shapes it into a thoughtful big screen wonderment with a great sense
of build. Deftly unlocks its internal mysteries in service of bigger
payoffs down the road.
LION
(Luke Davies)
It could easily have succumbed to
the typical 'true story' trappings of lesser Oscar bait, but Davies
finds the lonely psychological drama beneath the surface inspiration
of Saroo Brierley's autobio. Delicately maps out the overlap between
past and present.
LOVE
& FRIENDSHIP (Whit Stillman)
This
nifty transformation of Jane Austen's scant epistolary novel Lady
Susan
required a fair bit of invention on Stillman's part, but it fits
beautifully into her oeuvre of barbed dialogue and dry observational
humour.
MOONLIGHT
(Barry Jenkins)
Turns an experimental theatre
piece by Tarrell McCraney into a holistic triptych with more concrete
ties between separate chapters. Leans less on dialogue than
descriptive experiences to inform us about character.
SILENCE
(Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese)
Glacially
paced but never boring, this complex, thought-provoking meditation on
faith an Imperialism (from Shûsaku
Endô's
landmark novel) leaves a lot for patient audiences to unpack. Moments
of narration that would mar a lesser work earn their impact here.
Other considerations:
Elle (David Birke)
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, Chung Seo-kyung)
The Light Between Oceans (Derek Cianfrance)
Loving (Jeff Nichols)
The Witch (Robert Eggers)
