Room: Book vs. Movie
Lenny Abrahamson’s 2015 film Room adapts Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel, with a screenplay by Donoghue. A captive mother prepares her young son for an escape into a world he has never known.
From Books Adapted
What changed from the book
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Life after the escape is concentrated in the grandmother’s house
The escape is not the end of either version. The movie keeps the struggle to live outside Room, but shortens the hospital and police-station material and removes Ma’s brother.
Donoghue said she wanted fewer new characters in the second half. More of the adjustment happens inside the grandmother’s home, with time for Jack’s small discoveries in the house and garden. The larger, comfortable house also becomes another enclosed place in which the family has to learn to live together.
How it was adapted
The movie lets us see more than Jack understands
Emma Donoghue adapted her novel’s complete story, keeping its major events and its two halves. What changes is how closely everything is filtered through Jack.
The book gives his thoughts in a five-year-old’s voice. The movie uses some narration, but also lets us look directly at Ma and their surroundings. We can see things Jack cannot explain or does not recognize as unusual.
Donoghue said this let Ma become more central without adding a separate account of her captivity. Jack remains present through almost all of the movie. There is no added sequence showing the kidnapping, and no backstory explaining Old Nick.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Emma Donoghue
- Year
- 2010
- Pages
- 352Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 10 hr 45 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Suzanne Toren, Ellen Archer, Michal Friedman, Robert Petkoff
Five-year-old Jack understands the world through the objects and daily routines of the single room he shares with Ma. As his narration gradually reveals the captivity he cannot recognize, Ma tries to prepare him for an outside world he believes is imaginary and an escape that depends on his ability to act without her beside him.
- Director
- Lenny Abrahamson
- Writer
- Emma Donoghue
- Year
- 2015
- Runtime
- 1 hr 58 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Brie Larson, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, Jacob Tremblay
- Genre
- Drama
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
Held captive for years, Joy has protected her son Jack by making their locked room feel like a complete world. When she decides they must attempt an escape, she asks him to trust a reality he has never seen, beginning a struggle in which reaching other people does not automatically mean either of them feels safe.
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