Steven J Watson emerged into the literary consciousness in 2011 upon the release of his debut novel, BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP. The novel had an excellent reception, winning the Galaxy National and UK Thriller & Crime Novel of the Year, and has now been translated into over forty languages.

The story follows amnesiac Christine Lucas, who wakes up each morning with no recollection of the previous thirteen years. This is bad enough, but when unsettling truths about her past and present emerge, Christine begins to believe she is in danger. Director Rowan Joffe (28 DAYS LATER, BRIGHTON ROCK) has now adapted the book into a film. At this year’s Cambridge Film Festival, both Steven and Rowan spoke to Take One about the concept behind the plot, and how the character of Christine developed.

What is immediately clear is the strong creative relationship Steven and Rowan have established. Each has an abundance of respect and appreciation for the other, and perhaps this is what made the novel to film adaption process seem so fluid and natural. The inspiration for the novel originated from Steven reading the obituary of H Henry Gustav Molaison, a man unable to form new memories. I asked Steven how this led to the creation of a crime thriller: did he have an interest in memory before? Did he see it and immediately recognise a story?

“A bit of all of those things”, explained Steven. Having previously worked in the health services, he has encountered many people with related disorders. He has always been interested in psychology and the way that the mind operates, but as he made clear: “I wasn’t searching for a story about memory.”

“For me, it’s the job of any writer to write from someone’s perspective…”

“I just read this obituary, and it was one phrase, or one image, which was … this man’s nurse [who] met him every week for decades, and he didn’t know who she was. Even towards the very end of his life, he didn’t know. When she died, she must have thought she’d lost someone really close, but he must have not known who she was at all. Straight away, I got the image of a woman looking in the mirror, and seeing somebody else. And it really all spun out from there.”

Writing a thriller was not Steven’s original intention – but his love of suspense and Hitchcockian twists nevertheless influenced the story. Whilst the narrative does not go into in-depth medical detail, I wondered how much research into amnesia was needed, and how much was poetic license.

For Steven, he had never believed that the condition really existed, but was the combination of the two forms of amnesia held by the majority of people with similar conditions similar to Christine’s: they are only able to retain memories for 8 or 9 minutes. However, he felt that this would not have worked in the construction of a novel from the first person.

“I kind of invented this condition. Most of the research I did was actually reading case studies of people who really had conditions. It had to be scientifically accurate, so if the reader did know about memory and psychology, they were prepared to suspend disbelief. But the most important thing was to try and understand how it must feel: to wake up and not know who you are, to believe that you are someone totally different, and that you’ve done and experienced all these things that you just can’t remember.”

… his love of suspense and Hitchcockian twists unwittingly influenced the story …

The technicalities of amnesia and the psychological impact were equally important to the screen adaptation. Rowan Joffe noted that the nature of a thriller genre requires everything to add up. “My understanding of the condition that it is the fictionalization and amalgamation of two common forms of amnesia. Christine has both”. In consulting Professor Michael Kopelman, the UK’s authority on amnesia, Rowan learned that conditions involving memory loss were complex constructions.

“There is real amnesia, and there is Hollywood amnesia; and this is a classic example of Hollywood amnesia except for one thing. There is a form of psychogenic amnesia. In other words, it may not be specifically causally related to brain injury – it may be what was called in Freud’s era “hysteria”. It is a form of unconscious self-protection from something you don’t want to face up to”.

“What’s so fascinating about Christine’s story”, he continues, “is that it’s partly a story about guilt, partly a story about a woman who is struggling to find what her place is. So she is a woman locked in a battle with herself. On an emotional psychogenic level, Christine’s character does work. There is a human logic to it. That’s why Nicole (Kidman) was able to deliver it, that’s why the audience buys it, and it is why, in my mind, the novel works”.

Nicole Kidman executes the performance of Christine emotionally and powerfully. Writing from the perspective of a different gender has often been seen as a particular challenge to an author. I asked Steven whether he was conscious of making changes in how he was writing.

“For me, it’s the job of any writer to write from someone’s perspective,” he said. “On the one hand, I never saw it as being that different – if I had written a book from the first person perspective of an astronaut, I would have done research into what it was like to be an astronaut. But on the other hand, not many astronauts would notice. From the perspective of a woman, there are quite a few people out there who would notice. So I would ask a few friends if I had got the tone right … sometimes [they] would say, “that’s not quite how I would think”. I had a conversation about whether you would wear tights under trousers. Aside from that, I never really saw it as a particularly brave or controversial decision, until everyone afterwards told me it was”.

Rowan Joffe previously commented that it was always his dream to have Colin Firth play Ben – but what about Nicole Kidman as Christine? “I didn’t have Nicole in mind”, says Rowan, “Nicole got hold of my script without my knowledge. When you have an actor that responds like that to a character, especially when it’s Nicole, that’s the marriage of two phenomena: a name that will get your film enhanced, and a really serious actress saying, ‘I identify with this part so strongly that I’m prepared to ask if I can play it’”.

The casting is certainly incredibly effective. According to Steven, “it was actually amazing to watch them perform. Colin and Nicole just performing together… I’ve never seen anything like it”.

httpvh://youtu.be/OtSzAEvBIK0