How Does White Oleander Differ Between Book And Film?

White Oleander by Janet Fitch is so dense and layered that looking at it like a photograph is almost as useful as reading it. The novel is all interior weather, long, winding, lyrical sentences that follow the heroine, Astrid, through years of her life, through the times she grew and learned and was hurt. Ingrid, her mother, is clever and beautiful and she is so terribly, seductively cruel. The novel is full of long, winding sentences and also full of metaphor and memory. The oleander plant is an obsession, a danger, a pretty thing – and all of these things at once.

On film, Michelle Pfeiffer's performance as Ingrid is simultaneously captivating and repulsive, and vastly different from how the novel describes her. In order to best showcase these qualities, the camera must focus on them in particular ways, and the film thus is quite different from the novel. Alison Lohman conveys the confusion of Astrid at different ages beautifully, but many subplots in the novel are not included, and some of the novel’s crucial nuances are reduced or changed in order to fit into the film’s running time. As a result, some of the foster mothers are merged together, and we do not get to see the full effects of some of Astrid’s choices in the long run.

I think that both are excellent in very different ways. If one wants to be enveloped by the language and be taken on a long, hard journey through a girl’s life, then read the book. But if you want to experience a number of the same emotional moments in a more condensed format, and also appreciate some of the finest acting of the past decade or so, then watch the movie.

Overall, I felt that the movie basically covered all of the major points of the book, and showed them as siblings rather than twins, which was kind of comforting to me. The book is a very slow and intimate portrayal of the main character, Astrid, and her somewhat rough and raw journey through the foster care system and her ways of survival. The movie is more of a straightforward dramatic storyline with clear and concentrated emotional moments, less empty space, and less of the decay and erosion that the novel portrayed.

Also, the choices the actress makes to portray Ingrid are so much more powerful on the big screen than in the novel. The way Michelle Pfeiffer carries herself is so much more intimidating and menacing than what I read in the book. In the book, Ingrid is more of a mythic figure and is omnipresent in Astrid’s thoughts, but in no way as forceful as Pfeiffer portrays her. I can see where this would be a favorite of mine because the novel explores the interior life of the protagonist so deeply and viscerally, but the film is such concentrated drama with wonderful metaphor.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch is another story that I felt was best experienced as a novel. The story is told mostly through the interior life of the protagonist, Astrid, as she struggles to come to terms with her mother Ingrid’s influence on her life. Often strange and oblique, Fitch’s prose is also deeply detailed in its exploration of the many negative experiences of Astrid’s life, including her time in foster homes, her mother’s terrible philosophy, and the plant that serves as a symbol of poison and beauty for much of the novel.

The movie took a very different approach. The performances in the film are amazing – particularly Michelle Pfeiffer as Ingrid – and it concentrates on the emotional scene between the two characters. The story of each of the foster homes that Astrid goes to is told in a different way and, for the most part, each home is played out as a ‘before and after’ scenario for Astrid. The film is a very emotional, and sometimes frightening, watch – it highlights the severity of Ingrid’s philosophy on life and her affect on her daughter. I also love this movie for different reasons than I love the novel – mainly because of the outstanding performances by the actresses who played the roles of the mothers of the various foster homes of Astrid.