Misery (1990)

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I never fail to get a little pang of nausea as Untitled goes up in flames. Good argument for the cloud, if ever I heard one. (Says the man who still hand-writes his first drafts…)

Did I Like It: It’s going to feel trite to say “the book was better” but… ahem… The book is better. It’s a picky thing, but Stephen King’s novel is—horrifying though it might be—one of the best books about the love—and perhaps obsession—that is the writing process. After everything Paul Sheldon (Caan) goes through, he does not destroy Misery’s Return. He put real work into the book, and he wasn’t about to let Annie Wilkes (Bates) destroy another book.

Destroying both books may have a certain catharsis for the civilians, but it doesn’t do it for me.

Otherwise, the film is without flaws I can readily identify. Plenty of films try to imitate the trappings of a Hitchcock film, but few can tap into what a Hitchcock movie could do. Rob Reiner doesn’t get nearly enough credit for creating superlative films in disparate genres. I guess people are still stuck on Meathead at the end of the day.

Bates plays the terror of Wilkes not as some kind of boogeyman, which easily could have been the inclination. Instead, she is deeply (probably irretrievably) ill. As much as Paul Sheldon is a prisoner at the Wilkes farm, so too is Annie a prisoner in her own head.

The supporting turns from Farnsworth and Sternhagen might very well be the movie’s secret weapons. Every time they inhabit the frame, we’re instantly disarmed by their folksy charms. It makes the scenes with Wilkes and Sheldon far more harrowing, and Buster’s eventual fate is even more shocking when the two worlds inevitably collide. His small town detective as the engine for the film’s plot walked so that Frances McDormand could run in Fargo (1996).

Primary Colors (1998)

Director: Mike Nichols

Cast: John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Kathy Bates, Adrian Lester

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, man. Many, many times.

Did I Like It: There are few films (to say nothing of the source material) that have more influenced my early writing. 

The story of campaign workers slowly losing their sense under the weight of a wave of pure charisma speaks to, if not me, than certainly a younger version of me. That’s not who I am anymore, but its hard not to deny the sheer tonnage of nostalgia that the movie brings.

I just realized I didn’t answer the “did I like it” question, did I? Imagine that, not giving a straight answer to a question. Kind of like a politician. I do like the film. There are few truly great Travolta performances, and with his aw shucks Dr. Jekyll fighting with his horny, petulant Mr. Hyde, this might be my favorite of his work. But, ultimately, this movie  may not quite sing for me as much as it once did. 

I don’t think that it is the fault of the filmmakers. Just like a news story from the era, I just thin kit doesn’t age terribly great. Who could have guessed at the time that it would have this problem?

Could it be that large swaths of it ring tone deaf in the #metoo era. Possibly, but there is a moral environment in the film where our protagonist, Henry Burton (Lester) seems willing to fight (even if he eventually loses) for those more lofty ideals.

Is it because a cynical political satire about the Clinton era of politics doesn’t quite work the same in a time when the entire world seems like its increasingly on fire? That may be the more likely explanation for where the age is showing. Characters stand around knowing that if the juggernaut candidate Freddy Picker (Larry Hagman) is involved in some kind of nepotistic business deal or a tax swindle, he clearly has disqualified himself from being President. Twenty years ago, this film was bleak in its cynicism, now it is either Capraesque or naive in the extreme.