For most directors it would be an agonising predicament: how do you translate a novel with no discernible plot, in which nothing really happens, to the screen? John McGahern called his experimental masterpiece That They May Face the Rising Sun, about a small rural Irish community, an “anti-novel” for its rejection of conventional narrative.

“I thought that the act of taking drama out of it, if it was consciously done, could be dramatic in itself,” he told the Observer in 2005. “My whole idea was to take plot and everything else out of the novel and see what was left.”

Nearly two decades later Pat Collins has transferred the book to screen and it turns out there was no dilemma, no temptation to defile the source text, no itch to sex things up by smuggling in plot or confecting drama.

In fact the film omits the book’s most sinister character, John Quinn, because he was too dark. “He would have upset the whole balance of the film,” says Collins. “In a book, with somebody who is a kind of brute, you have time to recover from that character. Whereas in a film, it’s much more graphic, the character is up there on the big screen, and I think if John Quinn was there people would have been coming out of the cinema talking about him, as opposed to the community around the lake.”

That crashing sound is Ridley Scott falling off a chair. He would have expanded the role, cast Paul Mescal and had him glower from posters. But if the Irish Film and Television awards are any guide, Collins’ gamble worked – last month it won best film.

In its meditative, mesmeric way That They May Face the Rising Sun abjures not just Hollywood tropes but traditional storytelling. “I used to say that it was going to be very difficult to adapt into a film because of the nature of the book but that was actually the appeal of it,” says Collins. “You can try to do something that’s more distinct and original when you’re not following a very strict narrative.”

Set around 1980, and loosely autobiographical, McGahern’s novel charts a year in the life of a couple that have moved from London to live in a farmhouse amid a landscape of fields, lanes and lakes. Neighbours visit, the seasons pass, life unfolds.

“There’s no one overarching narrative,” says Collins, over video call from his home in west Cork with a lilting accent to match. “It’s not that I’m against story. I like films with stories, I like books with stories.”

Feature films face pressure to cut anything deemed extraneous to the core storyline, says Collins. “Everybody tells you: ‘It doesn’t have relevance to the story, get rid of it, get rid of it, let’s keep going to the end as fast as we can.’ I’m the opposite of that.”

McGahern’s book demanded a different treatment, says Collins, who made his name with understated, elliptical documentaries. “It’s to do with the experience of viewing and atmosphere and tone and the feeling of being immersed. It might be a little bit disorientating at the beginning but once you’re 40, 50 pages in you realise that you’re actually lost in it. It’s almost like you feel you don’t ever want to finish the book, that you love the world of the book.”

Few seem better qualified to replicate that in film. Collins made a documentary about McGahern in 2005, a year before the writer’s death, and directed the 2013 ideas-driven drama Silence, about a sound recordist revisiting his home on a remote Donegal island. The Irish Times calls Collins a “contemplative visual poet”.

Irish critics gave That They May Face the Rising Sun rapturous reviews, as did festival audiences in Santa Barbara and Gothenburg. “People were laughing at every joke that’s in the film and I was thinking: ‘God, it’s amazing how well it’s translating. I didn’t expect that.’”

He acknowledges comparisons to The Quiet Girl. “Maybe it shares the same pace. Things are given in a way you can reflect on it, rather than it being kind of an assault which is like a lot of modern cinema.”

The Guardian review gave three stars, lauding poignancy and subtle performances but suggesting the film hewed too close to the book: “This reserve means the drama verges on indistinct, with bravura camerawork out of bounds and sometimes timid characterisation.”

Rural Ireland was often considered monocultural but in fact communities were complex and diverse, encompassing political conservatives, leftists and bohemian souls who found creative outlet in amateur drama, says Collins.

“I think the film is about tolerance, it’s about trying to find accommodation with your neighbours even if you don’t agree with them. That’s something that’s becoming kind of rarer in the modern world, especially with social media.” It’s also about showing peasants – such a loaded term – in all their humanity and complexity, he says. “It is an opportunity to give some of those people dignity.”

McGahern’s novel drew on his experiences returning to live in County Leitrim with his American wife. On publication in 2002, villagers speculated over which neighbours might have inspired certain characters but there was none of the turbo-charged online sleuthing that has accompanied the Netflix series Baby Reindeer. Irish people have always been a bit wary of writers, says Collins. “Even going back to the old Gaelic times the poets were kind of feared because sometimes they spoke the truth too much.”

Having made a quiet film Collins is gratified but also taken aback by the buzz and publicity demands. “I’m finding the attention a little bit hard.” He smiles. “I feel like running for the hills, to be honest.”

• That They May Face the Rising Sun is screening in cinemas across the UK and Ireland.