Kazuo Ishiguro reveals why he prefers unfaithful film adaptations of his books

Kazuo Ishiguro, the celebrated author who wrote The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, has revealed he prefers unfaithful adaptations of his novels.

The 70-year-old writer’s Booker Prize-winning drama The Remains of the Day, published in 1989, was adapted by James Ivory in 1993. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins and Best Actress for Emma Thompson.

Mark Romanek translated Ishiguro’s 2005 science fiction work Never Let Me Go to screen in 2010, with Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley among the lead cast of the film, which was met with positive reviews.

Speaking to The Guardian, Ishiguro said: “I lean toward the film version moving the story on – not being a faithful translation the way a foreign language edition of a book might be.”

“I know many novelists who’d be annoyed to hear me say this,” he acknowledged. “The thing is, I watch many, many films and when an adaptation of a well-known book doesn’t work, 95 per cent of the time it’s because the film-makers have been too reverential to the source.”

Ishiguro continued: “It might sound like modesty when I encourage film adaptations to ‘move on’ the story. But actually it’s a form of egomania. I have aspirations for my stories to be like those of, say, Homer. Or to become like certain fairytales and myths, moving through the centuries and varying cultures, adapting and growing to speak to different audiences.

“My novels are themselves made up of materials I’ve inherited, imbibed and remoulded. When something goes from book to film it’s a campfire opportunity: it’s when the story should grow and evolve.”

Kei Ishikawa’s adaptation of Ishiguro’s debut novel A Pale View of Hills (1982) will premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival this Thursday, 15 May.

The film follows Etsuko (Suzu Hirose), a middle-aged woman who has settled in the UK but is haunted by the fate of her displaced eldest child.

Her younger daughter Niki (Camilla Aiko) is a budding writer. However, Ishiguro has specified the character and her experience is not based on him, but did acknowledge that he can relate to her.

“Where I see myself in Niki – and I was reminded of this watching Camilla Aiko’s fine performance – is in her sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes coy and cunning curiosity when coaxing memories from her mother of another, more troubled time,” he reflected.

Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954 and moved with his family to Guildford, Surrey, when he was six. He didn’t return to Japan until almost 30 years later.

His mother, Shizuko, was a teenager in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb dropped in 1945. She survived the attack and died, aged 92, in 2019.