Books vs. Movies
In this podcast we set out to answer the age old question: is the book really always better than the movie?
Books vs. Movies
Ep. 38 White Bird in a Blizzard by Laura Kasischke vs. White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)
What happens when a beloved book makes its way to the big screen? Join me on an exploration of "White Bird in a Blizzard" by Laura Kasischke and its cinematic adaptation directed by Greg Araki, starring Shailene Woodley. This episode invites you to uncover the mysterious disappearance of Kat's mother and the ripple effects it creates in both the book and the film. Just how do the differences in portrayal affect the story's impact, and what daring choices were made in adapting the 1980s setting and complex family dynamics?
We'll delve into the shifting relationships and buried secrets that propel the story forward. Kat's evolving connection with her boyfriend Phil, alongside a dark suspicion about her father's role in her mother's vanishing, weaves a tense narrative. Hear about the perplexing differences between mediums, such as the disturbing affair between Kat and a detective written into the book, and how the film chooses to handle adult-minor relationships. These narrative choices shape Kat's journey through a web of unanswered questions and emotional turmoil.
Concluding with a look at exceptional performances, I shine a spotlight on Shailene Woodley's portrayal of Kat, capturing her transformation with remarkable depth. Eva Green and Christopher Meloni also deliver standout performances, adding authenticity and complexity to their roles as Kat's parents. The film, with its cohesive storytelling and emotional resonance, offers a compelling experience, making it a must-watch. I encourage you to immerse yourself in this fascinating adaptation and share your thoughts by supporting the podcast with ratings and reviews.
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Welcome to Books vs Movies, the podcast where I set out to answer the age-old question is the book really always better than the movie?
Speaker 1:I'm Yuvia, an actress and book lover based out of New York City, and today I will be talking about White Bird in a Blizzard by Laura Kaczynski and it's 2014 adaptation, white Bird in a Blizzard, starring Shailene Woodley, ava Green and directed by Greg Araki. Hello everyone. So, yes, as you can see, I looked up how to pronounce this author's last name and it was totally not what I expected, because it is spelled the way I tried pronouncing it last week. It's spelled like it looks like it should be pronounced Kishishk or something like that, but it's actually Kiziski. So there you go, all right, so White Bird in a Blizzard by Laura Kiziski was first published in 1999. Now, I didn't realize this book was that old. I had heard about the film. I had actually been curious about it when it initially came out. I think 2014 was the year in which there was like a lot of movies that were getting a lot of hype and I was determined to see all of them, but at the time I was still in El Paso and, since a lot of them were indie films. We don't get a lot of smaller indie films released in El Paso. You need to be in New York or LA or some select markets, I'm sure, like Austin and Dallas in Texas would probably get them, but El Paso, no, we're not going to get it. So I never saw the film, but I had heard about it and I was intrigued by the concept and did want to check it out. And so when I saw that it was on Amazon, I finally watched it. And that's when I found out that it was based on a book. And yeah, I did not realize this book was that old.
Speaker 1:But moving on, white Bird in a Blizzard by Laura Koziski was first published in 1999. And it follows the story of Katrina Connors. Her mother disappears. It's assumed that she has walked out on the family. She's absolutely miserable in her marriage and it's obvious that being a stay-at-home mother, a homemaker, all of that was not what she actually wanted. So the year that Katrina turns Katrina or Kat turns 16, her mother disappears, kat and her father start to gather the pieces of their lives and Katrina doesn't seem all that bothered by her mother's absence. That is until she starts having dreams of her mother. That's when she realizes that she has to discover what these dreams mean so that she can sleep peacefully again. And that is when she discovers something unexpected.
Speaker 1:The 2014 adaptation of White Bird in a Blizzard is written and directed by Greg Araki. It stars Shailene Woodley as Kat, ava Green as her mother and Christopher Maloney as her father, and it follows the life of a teen girl whose world is turned upside down after her mother disappears. So this film slash book, do take place in the 80s. It actually takes place in 1988. Shout out to my brother and Orlando, because they're 88 babies, but yes's, that's when it came out and I mean, it seems like a pretty straightforward adaptation, but it's not or it is, I don't know. We'll get into it. So, yeah, I was intrigued by this film, or the the movie trailer, when this came out, but it was just never released in my hometown, so I never saw it and I kind of forgot about it. And then it popped up on one of the streaming services and I was like, oh yeah, I did want to watch that, so I did, but let's go ahead and get started.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that I want to say is that bothered me about Shailene Woodley's casting is that Kat is fat. The character of Kat is supposed to be fat, at least while her mom is around. So Kat and her mother kind of have this contentious relationship. They don't really, they just fight a lot. And it's obvious that Kat isn't meeting her mother's expectations in a lot of ways and one of the more egregious ones in Kat's mother's eyes is her weight. Kat is fat and her mother believes in being thin and beautiful and feminine and you can't be that if you're fat. In Kat's mom's eyes so she is fat.
Speaker 1:Now this book and film are like switch back and forth between Kat in the future and Kat in the past, like as in Kat before her mom disappears and Kat after her mom disappears. So we do kind of jump back and forth between those timelines. So Kat before her mother disappears is fat and Kat after her mother disappears is skinny. And I think it's just one of those things that like now that her mom is off of her bag and she can breathe a little bit and relax, she doesn't feel that pressure of needing to be perfect. I guess that's what makes it easy for her to lose that weight. So it did take a while in the book for us to get to this weight loss moment and then, once she loses that weight, she remains with that weight loss for the rest of the book. But so for the first half of the book, kat is fat, and so it definitely bothered me that Shailene Woodley is definitely not fat. She is very thin and she definitely has more of the standard Hollywood body expectation. That being said, kat does lose weight and we need to see this transformation in on screen in, especially since it is told in a lot of flashbacks.
Speaker 1:This would need to be done in a way that would more than likely be reliant on a fat suit, which I don't necessarily condone. So it is a little bit tricky because Kat's weight is a very important aspect of the relationship she has with her mother, so that weight is important. But fat suits are very offensive and most of the time look comical, not realistic. So I don't know, would it have been better to just cast a fat actress and just have her, have Kat, be fat throughout the whole film? Or is it just better to do what the film did and cast Shailene Woodley and not have weight be a factor at all in the character? I don't know. It's definitely tricky.
Speaker 1:Like I said, the films are shot out of order. There would be no way. I mean, I guess they could have like paused, they could have pulled a Mark Ruffalo in I Know this Much Is True in which they shot all the scenes of him as the more fit twin and then took a six-week break before going back and filming all the scenes of him after having packed on six weeks worth of weight. So maybe they could have done something like that, like film all the scenes where Kat has the weight loss and then taking a break to give the actress an opportunity to gain weight. I don't know, I kind of or it could have been reversed have assist a bigger actress in losing weight. I understand why they didn't do that. I think it requiring there were just would not have been any way to get the bigger actress down to a more noticeable size safely without like crash dieting or anything like that.
Speaker 1:We all know it's a lot easier to put on the weight than take it off. So I don't know it is a tricky one, but I kind of wish. I kind of do wish they had gone with a different actress rather than Shailene would, because the weight does play such an important factor in the way that Kat's mom talks to her and treats her and yeah, I think I kind of wish they had gone. It's so easy to just cast a conventionally attractive actress and make some sort of the knot essentially. But anyway, that was. I don't really have a solution for that because I know it might be difficult, but yeah, I if I kind of wish they had gone for a fat actress, just to have that perspective, because it is an important perspective.
Speaker 1:But anyway, one of the other changes that I'm not exactly sure why it was me, but I'm not necessarily complaining is so Kat has two friends. One of them is Mickey and in the book Mickey is a girl. She is a cheerleader, very beautiful, conventionally attractive cheerleader. In the film they made Mickey a boy. They cast Mark Andelicato as Mickey and apparently this was Greg Rocky's first choice to play Mickey. So I guess he just really wanted to work with Mark and switch gender, swap the roles. That change didn't really bother me. Mickey and the other friend that I can't remember, but in the film she's played by Gabrielle Sabidi, which I love her, but they're not important to the story. You easily could have cut them out of both and you would have probably gotten with the same conclusion. So, yeah, they're not really important to the story. So that change definitely didn't bother me. It was more of just like oh, mickey's supposed to be a girl, cool, all right. So in the film there is a moment and this is after Kat, after Kat's mom has been gone for about three years, I want to say and Kat is home from college and she and Mickey and the other friend which is really bugging me that I can't remember her name. Let me look up her name really quick. So she's not just some nameless person Beth. Okay. So Beth and Mickey are the two friends. So Beth, mickey and Kat are all home from college.
Speaker 1:I want to say it's like the holiday break or spring break or Thanksgiving break it's definitely not the summer break, it's one of the shorter breaks and they're all in town and they're all hanging out in Kat's basement. That's like their go-to hangout spot and they're all hanging out and then at one point they're drinking champagne and they're like, oh, this champagne kind of sucks, let me chill it for a bit. And there's a freezer in the basement that hasn't been used pretty much since Kat's mom died because Kat's mom was the only one that did the cooking. So in the years since Kat's mom died, because Kat's mom was the only one that did the cooking. So in the years since Kat's mom's disappearance it's kind of just become a catch-all, it's just become an extra counter space. So it's one of those like those meat locker kind of freezers, I guess you could say, like the horizontal ones, not the ones that stand upright. So, yeah, she and her friends go over and they start like removing the newspapers that have collected on top of this freezer so they can try to chill the champagne. And as they're doing that, kat's father shows up and is like you need to go home now and he kicks Mickey and Beth out. And then he gets this, causes Kat and him to get into a fight and she's like I can't believe you did that, like that was so embarrassing, and also they're my friends. And he's like well, you guys are underage drinking. And she's like that never bothered you before. And so it becomes this whole thing In the book. He kind of just decides to kick them out because the pretense is they're underage drinking, but there isn't really anything else that triggers it. Yeah, it's kind of just like you need to leave now. And that's it In the film as well.
Speaker 1:So in the book Kat's boyfriend, phil, so they were they're kind of still dating by the time Kat heads off to college. But it's definitely more casual. They were a lot more serious when they were in high school and then he stayed behind and she went to college. So it's definitely become a lot more casual. They were a lot more serious when they were in high school and then he stayed behind and she went to college. So it's definitely become a lot more casual.
Speaker 1:And there reaches a point in which they stop sleeping together. Like when they first started dating they couldn't keep their hands off each other kind of situation. And then as time went on, like they kind of just stopped. And so at one point Kat is like confronts him about like at one point they're just talking and Kat questions him like if he had anything to do with her mom's disappearance and he's like no, but your dad definitely does. And she's like what do you mean? And he's like that's all I'm gonna say. And then that's the last time they talk to each other and and then in the book it kind of just stays like that. Like the words, phil's words, bother her, but she doesn't do anything about it. Well, she does and we'll get into what she does.
Speaker 1:But in the film there's a little bit more after that. So after she has that conversation with Phil, she goes to her, she starts having this moment in which she's she starts freaking out and again she heads down to the freezer and her dad's like what are you doing? And she's like I don't know, I just do you know what happened to my mom? And he's like no, and then she says you would tell me. Right, like if you, if you knew what happened to her, you would tell me. And he says yes, of course. And so she confronts him about what Phil says in the film.
Speaker 1:In the book she doesn't. She takes matters into her own hands in the book. In the film she has this confrontation with her father and then she sets out, she gets on a plane to go back to college and flies away without ever finding out what happened to her mom. And in the book she does find out what happened to her mom. I guess let me rephrase that she leaves back to college without knowing where her mom is. In the book she discovers where her mom is, but in the film she ends up. So the film is one of those like strongly narrated films, like we get a lot of voiceover from Kat explaining what happened, what's going on, and so she ends up.
Speaker 1:We get images of her on the flight home as she's crying, and then we're getting into like the official spoiler territory. Now I think you can probably guess what happens if you haven't guessed it by now. But if you haven't guessed it right now, this is we are officially in spoiler territory. So if you do not want to know what happens to Kat, what happened to Kat's mom, all of that, then now is the time to turn back. So we get images of as she's narrating this.
Speaker 1:We get images of Kat flying back to college and then we get images. We see a shot of her dad getting arrested and she tells us an image of her mom in the freezer. And she tells us an image of her mom in the freezer. And what happened was, after the two close calls, essentially with the freezer, with Kat and her friends, and then Kat, right before she confronts her father, he realizes it's like it's no longer safe to keep the body here. So he takes the body, but at this point the body had been in the freezer for so long that by the time he took it out to bury it, she just melted. Like she had been frozen for so long that she just melted. Like there was no evidence of how he killed her. I think there's like remnants. It's not like she there's.
Speaker 1:They find like evidence of the body and the police arrest him and he confesses and says that he's the one that killed her. But there's no like like had they not found whatever stuff can't be melted, or I'm not exactly sure how that works, but essentially like she had been frozen for so long that majority of her melts. And so they arrest him and he ends up killing himself while in custody. And yeah, so cat finds out all of this after the fact in the book. So Phil tells her like your dad definitely knows what happened to your mom, and she's like what do you mean? And he's like that's all I'm going to say. And she's been having these dreams of her mom in a blizzard and that leads her to go to the basement and open up the freezer and she, she finds her, her mom's body. And that's how the book ends Like she finds her mom. The last sentence is like I found my mom. That's a very. Before I reveal what the motivation was.
Speaker 1:Let me just talk a little bit about different aspects of both that I liked, because what happens to the motivation is tied to one of the things that I did appreciate about the film. So in the book, after she and Phil stop having sex, she falls for this like for the detective that's like the lead detective on the mother's on the case to find out what happened to her mother and she. They start having an affair and I will say I think I appreciated the portrayal a little bit better in the book because it does make you feel a lot more uncomfortable. I don't. One of the things that really, really irks me and it's been such a trope like this was like the go-to trope of the 2010s was like student-teacher relationships and really, really glorifying that and making it seem like it's okay, when obviously no, it's not, while this is not a student-teacher relationship sexual relationship it is a sexual relationship between an adult and a minor and the adult is also a cop. So I will say I think the film glorified it a little bit more than the book did.
Speaker 1:The book like yeah, and not that it was saying like necessarily that it was okay or anything, but like the after she has sex with the detective and she tells her friends about it. They start talking about like oh, who's better in bed? Like is it the detective or is it phil? And yeah, and in the book like they do have these conversations, but it's I'm trying to describe how like the way it's written definitely makes you feel a little bit more like ooh, but he's an adult and I think it's especially like more gross because like the detective's pillow talk is really like it's really gross pillow talk in terms of like, oh, you're into her body because it's the body of a child as opposed to like the body of a woman, that kind of pillow talk, if that makes any sense. Yeah, and like the film definitely makes it seem more, a lot more normalized. I'm not saying it makes it seem romantic or ideal necessarily, but it does feel a lot more normalized than the book. Like the book definitely made me be a little bit more like oh, that's gross. Why would you say that to a child? That kind of thing I didn't necessarily like that. The film kind of normalized it a little bit more.
Speaker 1:The other thing that just really that I really didn't like about the, about the book, was the way it was written. It was just very like there was just so much description, but like it was overly flowery and, yeah, it just I couldn't tell reading it if I was enjoying what I was reading or not. I was intrigued by the concept, but I yeah, I didn't necessarily, I couldn't fully get into it. There wasn't anything necessarily that was drawing me in.
Speaker 1:The thing that I really liked that the film did was kind of give us that closure in terms of what caused that, what motivated her father to kill her mother, and the reason is that so, like I've said many times, kat and Phil reach a point in which they stop having sex with each other and it's kind of implied that there could be something going on between Phil and her mother. She just gets very flirty and she finds ways like she'll wear outfits that are a little short or things like that, and ask Phil his opinion on them, but we're never explicitly told why they stop having sex with each other. It kind of just happens and in the film they stop having sex with each other and you're really in the film, you're really really led to believe that that's the reason why they stopped having sex with each other because Chad's mom and Phil started having an affair. But plot twist in the film, like I said, the book it just ends with her finding the body and we never get that closure of. But why? Why did the dad kill the mom?
Speaker 1:And, mind you, it is said frequently that it was obvious that she wasn't happy she found ways to. She was constantly bringing Kat down, she was constantly insulting her husband. Like this lady was not likable in any shape or form. I didn't like this character at all and I kind of felt very apathetic towards her disappearance, which is the way that that Kat felt, at least in the book. Like Kat is kind of just like, yeah, she's gone. So it's kind of like like Kat seems much happier and not at all concerned about what happened to her mother, because now she does wonder. But it's definitely like it seems like her life is better now that her mother is gone for sure, which I'm just like. I don't blame you, that lady's awful, but I'm not necessarily sure that that was the author's intention. Like, was I supposed to be feeling that way about? Should I have been? I don't know. I felt a lot more along the lines of how Kat felt in the book towards her mother, like she's fine, good, I mean she's gone, good.
Speaker 1:But yeah, in the film Shailene Woodley definitely adds a layer of like. She seems kind of apathetic towards her mother's disappearance and it's like kind of blase, like it's not a big deal, it's fine, whatever. Like she was, she wasn't happy, she's probably like she left on her own it's fine. And then the more she has these dreams and the more as time passes, the more it starts getting to her that she doesn't know what happened to her mother. And so when she confronts her father, it's a very like sad, kind of like begging, pleading, crying, please, like you would tell me if you know where she is, please, like you would right, like just if you know anything, just tell me please, kind of situation which I'm not sure that the mom is any more likable in the film. If I'm being honest, I can see Shailene Woodley did add that kind of layer to it, which which I really liked.
Speaker 1:But anyway, back to the motivation. So yeah, we never get the motivation in the book, other than maybe he just got tired of her constant put downs and insults and things like that. We don't know, we don't know. But we do get the motivation in the film and the motivation is that Kat's mom comes home from shopping one day and she enters her bedroom to discover Phil and her husband in bed together. And Phil runs out of the room embarrassed and Kat's mom just starts laughing and laughing and laughing and Kat's father tells her to be quiet, be quiet, shut up. She doesn't stop laughing and so eventually he puts his hands around her until she stops laughing. And yeah, so that is the motivation for him killing her in the film. But yeah, we don't get that in the book, which I guess that's. I did see that this was someone's complaint in their review of this book. I did see that this was someone's complaint in their review of this book, which makes sense because she, you know Kat.
Speaker 1:The book is told from a first person narrative, which is why I think they added so much voiceover for the film. So it's told from first person. But yet Kat knows a lot of like what people are thinking, like. Like she knows what they're thinking and yet she doesn't know what her dad's thinking when it came to killing her mom. I don't know, it's just one of those things that's like. Well, it's convenient that she knows all these other people's thoughts, but she doesn't happen to know, like this, one really important thought. But anyway, yeah, one other change that I did forget to mention is just that cat in the film, if I'm not mistaken, is going to school in California. The Kat grows up. It is from Ohio and in the book she is going to school in Michigan. It's about a four hour drive from where she lives in Ohio to her college in Michigan. So she gets dropped off and picked up for vacation by her dad and her dad's new girlfriend. But in the film, like I said, she flies back to school after the confrontation with her dad. But anyway, yeah, I mean I rated the book three stars and I rated the film three stars as well.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't call it a tie, though I am leaning more towards the film because, like you said, there was just something about the writing of the book that wasn't connecting with me. It felt a little bit too overly descriptive and, yeah, it was just like so. It was beautifully written. Beautifully written, I'm not going to. I'm not going to deny that it was absolutely gorgeously written, the imagery and everything that you're getting. But I'm not sure that it necessarily added to the story other than just being beautiful words on a page. That and we're trying to figure out what it could mean. And Kat, I think, is just I don't know, I think she's a little too apathetic or something. She just. Yeah, I thought the film was OK as well.
Speaker 1:I think what mostly bugged me about that film was the narration of it. It's so tricky because voiceover narration can be so helpful in terms of the storytelling, but it can hinder it a little bit if you're telling us a little bit too much instead of showing us, and I feel like this fell a little bit more into the telling and not so much showing kind of aspect. I don't know. So, yeah, it also could just be like I had been so interested in watching this film for so long that by the time I actually watched it it was like, I mean, I waited a really long time to see this and it wasn't anything necessarily special. But yeah, so the winner is the film and, like I said, it mainly has to do with the beautiful writing of the book that is just a little bit too descriptive and not adding anything to the story itself, in my opinion, as opposed to the film.
Speaker 1:But what I really liked about the film at least, was the acting. I mean, shailene Woodley did a really, really good job in giving us like this blasé kind of character whose walls start coming down as the film progresses and she realizes like no, my mom is gone and she could be gone forever and it's possible she's not alive and just abandoned me, like it's possible that something really did happen to her. So I recommend it, definitely for the acting Ava Greene, as the mom, was also really good. And yeah, christopher Maloney, he just played like a really good kind of like loser-ish father figure type thing. So that is it for this episode of Books vs Movies and if you like this podcast, please leave it a rating and a review and tell all your friends all about it, please, and I will see you next time. Bye.