Harry here, and now that Massawyrm doesn't like a movie, I'm now incredibly fired up to see it! I've never seen a new release film that he didn't just love like a man with 15 minutes and $25. But here's the proof... I haven't read HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, so I have no idea whether or not it is accurate or bastardization... But it's by the SHINE guy, has Hopkins... And a kinda creepy trailer with heartstrings attached. We'll see though...
Hola all. Massawyrm here with a spoiler heavy deconstruction of the great disappointment of a film "Hearts in Atlantis". For those of you who are going to see this despite any criticism, and would rather skip the spoilers, let me just say that this film seems very old hat. It's all been done. Not a single piece of this film is new, refreshing or even vaguely different than anything you've seen before. Despite fantastic performances, nice cinematography and interesting initial concepts, this film never quite comes together. It feels like every other non horror Steven King screen adaptation you've seen, cut apart and pasted haphazardly together. So go warned or wait for this on video, because this isn't anything to really get excited about.
Okay, so on to the spoilers.
Let me first start off by saying I'm not much of a Steven King fan. I think most of his Richard Bachman work is pure genius, but that he hasn't been able to end a horror novel properly since the early 80's. Now I say this having read a bulk of his work and having seen every single movie penned by him or having been adapted from his writing. I mean, 1250 pages of "The Stand" only to have the villains wiped out by Deus ex Machina in the last few pages, and quite literally so as the hand of God himself reaches down and detonates a nuclear bomb. And "It", such a brilliant creepy novel turning into a battle between a giant spider and an ancient turtle. Come on Steve.
Needless to say, "Stand by Me", "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Firestarter" still remain some of both my favorite stories and my favorite film adaptations of all time. And it breaks my heart to see "Hearts in Atlantis" gut those films of their very essence and pilfer the brilliance of what has come before to form a piecemeal, heartstring tugger like this. How does this gut those films you ask, well let me first begin with a brief synopsis.
David Morse is Bobby, an artist who receives word that a childhood friend has passed. When he attends the funeral he visits his childhood home where he lived for six years and is flooded with memories that make up the rest of the film. Flashback: It's his eleventh birthday, and his awful, evil wretch of a mother, played Soullessly by Hope Davis (who I've really enjoyed in the past), has gotten him a library card for his birthday because, as we find out later, she has spent all the money she makes on nice clothes for herself. That same day a stranger by the name of Ted (Anthony Hopkins) moves in. He befriends Bobby and enlists him to work for him, reading him the paper and keeping an eye out for the "Lowmen", some creepy MIB types that hunt in packs and have strange hunting habits. But Ted is more than he appears. He can read peoples minds and see the future (telepathy and precognition for the more anal about their various forms of psychic abilities among you).
The rest of the film is about The boy and Ted's friendship, the boy's love for his best friend a neighborhood girl, and Ted's avoidance of the dreaded Lowmen.
"So what's wrong with that?" you might ask "Sounds like a cool premise." Yes, indeed it does sound like a cool premise. Too bad its spoiled every step of the way as everything new is proven to be old. You see, give me an AVID unit, four of Steven King's other films and I could cut you a very similar, if not note perfect version of this film. Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, Firestarter and The Green Mile. That's all I need.
You see, in order to endear us to Bobby, we see a montage of shots in which he hangs out with his two best friends, while fifties music (the classic guitar instrumental Sleepwalker being one of them, the theme used for Steven King's Sleepwalkers) plays over it, just as we saw in Stand By Me. This is dramatically shown to be pirated as we get the creme de la creme of money shots, the three kids off on some adventure, walking down the railroad tracks. Include the fact that at the end of Stand By Me, we find that the whole story was told because a week earlier, Richard Dreyfuss/Wil Wheaton's friend had just died and he had been flooded with memories, just as David Morse is here.
When fifties music isn't playing, we are treated to a score that sounds remarkably like that of the Shawshank Redemption. You know, that constant, beautiful sonorous piano score that so effectively set the mood. Well, it sets the mood here too as if they simply borrowed it and laid it down as temp music and never bothered to change it.
And then there's the mysterious Ted, who at first we think is some sort of Miracle Man, who turns out merely to be a psychic. Only, if he touches you, he passes a bit of his energy onto you and you can read minds and see the future too, thus changing your life forever as you have been touched by a miracle. Hmmm....sounding familiar, like some Frank Darabont film you've seen recently about some inmate who passes on his life-force, healing you and changing your life forever...The Green Mile maybe?
And what of those mysterious Lowmen? Weird psychic beings? Aliens? Atlantean survivors trying to recapture one of their own? Nope. FBI agents, searching for an escaped psychic who they want to use in their program for the government's evil schemes...no wait...that couldn't be this movie could it? That was Firestarter right? Not Hearts in Atlantis. Nope. It's both.
Then just for good measure, toss in a sports story with a hero that Bobby can draw strength from later in the film as he battles his way through the woods and you preempt who ever adapts "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", something Arthur C. Clark refers to as Precognitive Plagiarism in the afterword for "3001", referring to Independence Day's ending being the same as his. Harry once told me, in reference to a filmmakers body of work "I don't care if he steals as long as he steals well and makes it better." Well, Hearts in Atlantis doesn't do it better.
Here we have an amalgam of some of Steven King's best works, brought to us in a sappy manner that never gels together properly. We never really get drawn into the world presented to us, and the two great mysteries of the film, what is Ted and what are the Lowmen, not only turn out to be run of the mill, but are answered halfway through the film in the lamest way imaginable: by Bobby reading the Newspaper to Ted and there being an article on the FBI denying the use of psychics for warfare against the commie menace. Bobby then turns to Ted and there is a brief discourse explaining away anything remotely mysterious and magical. And that's where the film really loses its power. It rides for so long on those mysteries, then loses all it's steam at their revelation as we just wait for the touching ending.
Which of course leads to the question "Why in the hell did they have to explain it in the first place?" Whatever happened to films leaving us with a bit of mystery to ponder, argue and debate? How good would Casablanca be if they bothered to spell out Rick's past rather than leaving him a total mystery and one of cinema's most enigmatic characters? What about if they told us whether Total Recall was a dream or not? And what if there was a perfectly logical, scientific explanation of Romero's Night/Dawn/Day of the Living Dead series? Would it have been as scary if we knew why the dead were rising?
I'm personally troubled by the current trend of total disclosure in film. Even long time mysteries aren't sacred. Dimension taught us that Michael Myers was really a genetic experiment to house the essence of an ancient Celtic force of evil. 3001 (if it's ever made) spoils the ending of one of the greatest film mysteries of all time by explaining what REALLY happened to Dave Bowman and HAL. And George Lucas takes the wind out of the sails of the force by removing the mythical elements and making it the side effect of Midichlorians.
Now I haven't read the stories that "Hearts in Atlantis" is adapted from, so I sat down with one of my closest compadres, everyone's favorite crusty seaman, Quint, and had him explain the stories and their concepts to me. Essentially, in the novella, Ted is an avatar for this mystical Dark Tower, the centerpiece of the book series of the same name. He is not human, but a force driven by this tower. And the Lowmen are never explained, but they certainly aren't FBI agents. So why do they give us this fabricated psychic/FBI story? One would assume because they want to appeal to an audience that didn't read the Dark Tower series. But why explain it at all? Why not just leave it mysterious, so that in the event that the other books are adapted, the mystery can be built upon? Or, what if, and this is a reach, but what if this movie actually encouraged us to go out and read the books to find out what this was all about? Hmmm. Opening the door to other films and sideways selling the books? Nah, lets just fudge it and simplify it for audiences, because heaven forbid someone not fully understand what's going on in the film.
No. This film is entirely about revelation, and early revelation at that. There's not one perfectly timed surprise. We learn before the flashback (ie 5 minutes in) that not only is Bobby's male friend dead, but so is his childhood girlfriend (the third of their trio). So although we get to know them, we never get attached. To the audience, these characters have no futures, and we suffer no emotional loss. Oh, we're supposed to. You can tell by the voice over and the soundtrack, but we really don't care. Oh, and the one thing the movie doesn't bother to tell us, is how the girlfriend dies. The one piece of info that would bring closure to her character and they just leave it at "Oh, she died years ago."
And yet all this revelation leads to one of the most emotionally undeserving endings in recent years. You see, by the end of the film, Bobby's mother has been proven to have lied about his father in some of the worst ways possible, she has turned Ted into the FBI leading to his apprehension and she moves to another state, taking Bobby away from his two best friends, one of whom is the supposed love of his life. And then she simply asks "Can you ever forgive me?" without having attempted the slightest bit of atonement, and he looks up with love in is eyes (a love for his mother we never see in the film until now) and says "I'm working on it". They embrace, get in the car and happily drive off into the sunset.
But that's not all. We're also suddenly introduced (once we're out of the flashback) to Bobby's ex-girfriends daughter, who just happens to be walking by, and they share yet another saccharine moment as they each gain closure for the situation as a whole. Ahhhh...cue the voice over and roll the credits, because everyone's happy, right? Right? No.
What's so sad about this film is that the performances by Anthony Hopkins and the kids in this film are really, really good. Hopkins is at his Hopkiny best and both Bobby and his girlfriend are wonderful. And most of the cinematography is really pretty (one shot is so good they use it twice, you know what the hell. No one will notice. It's only the best freaking shot in the movie.) But this movies total lack of real suspense or intrigue and it's dependence upon material that's been done better before really knocks this down to a disappointment of the same scope as A.I.
Well, that's it for me friends. Till next time...
Smoke 'em if ya got 'em. I know I will.
