Nocturnal Animals book vs movie

THE BOOK INSIDE ANOTHER BOOK INSIDE THE MOVIE. Tony and Susan, and Nocturnal Animals

Tom Ford, both a famous fashion designer and a movie director, has put on screen a piece of extraordinary and exceptionally written art. Tony and Susan book has an additional imaginative layer, not so common even for the bestsellers chosen to become movies. Austin Wright, the author of the original book, has accomplished something more than just a detective story with a dark atmosphere of despair. He puts his characters into another inner story, called Nocturnal Animals, blurring the line between two fictional realities.

Susan Morrow, the female protagonist of the “main” plotline, reads a book by her former husband. The story itself turned out to be much more intimate than it looked at the beginning. ‘Nocturnal Animals’ novel hides the personal story of Susan and Edward, love, and sorrow. Susan, as the main character of the “real” plotline, dives into a story and the fate of Tony Gastings, a fictional character who resembles the image of her husband. The movie adaptation by Tom Ford emphasizes this emotional conflict using artistic shapes, music, and plot points. The book inside the movie, a story inside another story, now reflects the very personal issue of an allegory.

In both the Tony and Susan book and the Nocturnal Animals movie, this inner story grabs the complete attention of the audience. The creators of both pieces of art use a system of contrast and emotional markers and put them into the “real” plotline. Even the ‘Tony and Susan’ title itself resembles this allegorical contradiction. Susan from the so-called real world (indeed fictional) is the first protagonist. The second one is presented not with Edward but with Tony, a character from Edward’s book called “Nocturnal Animals.” Two characters from different layers of a story emotionally interact both in a book and in a movie adaptation.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS EXPLAINED

Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals movie has happened to be something more than a good traditional movie adaptation. Tom Ford is famous for his eccentricity, and it’s twice as exciting to figure out the scale of his artistic impact as a director. More than this, a majority of those who were satisfied with “Nocturnal Animals” have no idea who the director was. Tom Ford is the author of another well-criticized project called A Single Man with Colin Firth. On closer examination, both pictures have almost identical visual and even emotional narrative styles, including a soundtrack. “Nocturnal Animals” is truly Tom Ford’s uniquely designed project, based on Austin Wright’s “Tony and Susan” book. The director has also created a scenario of his vision.

Whereas “A Single Man” opens with a scene of a naked man’s body in water, “Nocturnal Animals’ shocks even more with a grotesque dance, performed by two fat, ugly women. The “real” plotline of Susan is depicted with delicacy and stylistic perfection. The dark building fashion with stone and glass and classic tones of the architecture. An extraordinary art gallery with sharply dressed employees. Susan’s vivid makeup and the perfect style of her “perfect” husband, who was found to be a betrayer and a bankrupt. This visually calibrated life in luxury is only a cover of the emotional ordinariness and poverty of her inner world and a sign of Susan’s day-to-day frustration.

The contrast plotline with Tony Gastings progresses within an American rural area, with characters dressed dirty and wrinkled. His peace and harmony, joy and happiness, are being collapsed within only one long night. Tom Ford gradually emphasizes his main protagonist for us to feel this contrast. The emotional “Nocturnal Animals” soundtrack leads the audience through scenes of maximum suspense and unexpected plot points. The movie instantly cooperates with our emotions and keeps up the pressure even within passive, contemplative scenes with minimum action within a frame.

Nocturnal Animals book vs movie

The age of the characters in the two main plotlines differs for Susan and Edward (Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal in a movie). The novel points out that both Susan and Edward are 49 years old, and they have been divorced for 25 years. “Nocturnal Animals” makes a difference with 19 years divorced and approximately 40 years old. Susan in a book is a housewife without ambitions to operate an art gallery. Tom Ford has intensified the relationship between these two characters with an abortion conflict, an act that has destroyed the marriage. “Nocturnal Animals” places a strong emphasis on Susan’s interaction with a book and paranoia. Susan, in the novel, finishes her story with disappointment; as Edward has not called her, she concludes and faces the future. Susan is strongly involved in the situation and is emotionally devastated.

Nocturnal Animals pays great attention to the nighttime road scene with some minor differences. The movie depicts a police car that has not stopped to help a family. The novel shows us a few cars. One driver even makes a stop; an elderly man with poor hearing does not notice the danger and continues his way forward.

At daybreak, Tony reaches some living accommodations and asks for help and a telephone to call the police. Edward in the novel spends a chapter with an elderly couple, who do their best to figure out whom they should call at this early hour.

The bodies of Tony’s wife and daughter are left on a red sofa in a movie and hidden in some bushes in a book.

Susan in the Tony and Susan book has three children, and we see only one in “Nocturnal Animals.” Her elder daughter in the book is 15 years old, and in the movie, she spends her night side by side with her boyfriend.

In both the book and the movie, it takes a year between the homicide and the next active phase of the investigation, performed by Detective Bobby Andes. Tony, in a novel, has some signs of a normal life. He intensifies his relations with his family and even spends time with some women.

The scene of a conflict between SUSAN and her mother is absent in the book and was added to the Nocturnal Animals movie by Tom Ford. Nevertheless, this moment shows us the transformation of our main character and a later closeness to the reality that her mother has previously stated.

We all have memorized the scene when Tony, with Detective Andes, meets Ray in the backyard of his rural home, sitting on a toilet. This grotesque moment was added to the plot as the characters in the novel first identify the potential murderer within a sports game.

One of the final scenes in the “Tony and Susan” book also depicts two women, close friends of the detective Booby Andes, being the eyewitnesses of an act of reprisal.