Hearts in Atlantis film review

TIFF [2001]

(USA, 2001, 101 minutes)
Directed by Scott Hicks
Screenplay by William Goldman
Based on the novel "Hearts In Atlantis" by Stephen King
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, Mika Borem, David Morse

Movie Review

William Goldman ("Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid") returns to do Stephen King justice once again, after his acclaimed adaptation of "Misery" ten years ago. Streamlining two of the novel's stories, "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and "Why We're In Vietnam" into a sweet, if a tad too-low-key, reminiscence of childhood innocence lost (and sage-like wisdom achieved supernaturally), "Hearts In Atlantis" seems so determined to avoid any chance of a "schlock" label that it floats along prettily, inoffensively, from trailer moment to trailer moment.

Full size photo
Director Scott Hicks and star Anthony Hopkins at the fest press conference.

Successful photographer Robert Garfield (David Morse) returns to his hometown of Harwich, Connecticut to attend the funeral of his childhood friend killed in combat. He flashes back to the summer of 1960, when he was 11 years old (now played by Anton Yelchin) and living with his bitter widowed mother Elizabeth (Hope Davis) hand-to-mouth in a run-down boarding house. A charming stranger, Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins), moves in upstairs for what he assures will be only a few weeks, and Elizabeth is immediately suspicious of the elderly man's relationship with her son, and his friends, including "Bobby"'s first love, Carol Gerber (Mika Borem). Under the auspices of hiring Bobby to read him the papers, Ted pays the boy a dollar a week to look out for the "low men", who are pursuing him for reasons he won't reveal.

Scott Hicks, of "Shine" and "Snow Falling On Cedars", might not have been the strongest candidate for material that requires a deft handling of drama and some subtle sci-fi elements, but his slick, straightforward direction wisely lets the actors and the dialogue... well... "shine" (sorry), and is helped immensely by the late cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski, who manages to make fading wallpaper and broken concrete look positively inviting.

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There's a little too much reliance on the convenient use of pop songs to evoke the period (Hicks seems content to follow Reiner's model with "Stand By Me"), and some of the golden-lit childhood romance strays dangerously close to saccharine "My Girl" territory, often at the expense of the stronger story of the relationship between Bobby and Ted. The otherworldly aspects of Ted's nature, and pursuit by the "Low Men" (here, sans "yellow coats") are downplayed to the point of non-existence, and in the end, it seems like old Ted is on the lam from irate bookies rather than the trans-dimensional bounty hunters of King's story.

In his 1986 essay "Why The Children Don't Look Like Their Parents", concerning the then-abysmal state of King film adaptations, Harlan Ellison wrote that most of the films "look as if they'd been chiseled out of Silly Putty by escapees from the Home For The Terminally Inept". "He is writing more of shadow than substance", Ellison said of King, "he knows what makes us tremble. He knows about moonlight reflecting off the fangs. It isn't his plots that press against our chest, it is the impact of his allegory." Ellison suggested that filmmakers stop "dumbing down" the characters and obliterating allegory and subtext at the expense of FX and cheap shocks. In the 15 years since that article, someone must have listened, because the quality of King adaptations have certainly improved, witness the aforementioned "Misery", "The Shawshank Redemption", "The Green Mile", "Dolores Claiborne", and even the television adaptation of "The Stand".

It's a pity that with "Hearts In Atlantis", the filmmakers went too far the other way. In robbing "Low Men" of its fantasy elements, one of King's most moving fables has been re-rendered toothless and ordinary.

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