All the King’s Men

We went to the opening of the new adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's 1947 masterpiece. How to rate it? I suppose the easiest thing to say to that I'd give it an Ebert-style "thumbs up." But that's no saying much. On the whole I'd say I liked the movie: it was beautifully shot, much (but hardly all) of the acting was good, and I keep thinking about it. All good signs. But it could have been so much better.

Trying to adapt Warren's book is no mean feat. (By the way, is there some way to fire every reviewer who refers to it as "a remake of the 1949 movie"?) The novel is simultaneously cinematic in style and interior in its emotional weight. We are always inside Jack Burden's head in the novel, a head in turmoil. The movie takes some stabs at this interiority through voice-overs, but they feel forced and half-done. The book is a monster and cutting the storylines around Willie Stark's wife and son were good choices. Still other shortcuts fail. Patricia Clarkson's Sadie Burke is a disaster. She needs to be meaner and physically less attractive. And Kate Winslet doesn't capture the perfect and shimmering beauty of Anne Stanton. Sadie is supposed to be the pockmarked moon to Anne radiant sun. There are many more, but again, how do you tame a beast like ATKM?

One last note: ATKM is really the story of Jack Burden, not Willie Stark. Willie is fascinating (as was the Huey Long he was based on), but he's just a planet in the orbit of Jack's universe. But when it's Hollywood and Sean Penn, you have to make the movie about Willie. So go see the movie, but be sure to read the book.

23 September 2006; 0 comments