Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!
Heading back to the late 90s for an old-fashioned Oscar bait movie, The Cider House Rules, directed by Lasse Halstrom and written by John Irving (based on his 1985 novel). Cider House stars Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Paul Rudd and Michael Caine, in an Oscar-winning turn.
Set mostly in the 1940s, the film begins by introducing Dr. Wilbur Larch (Caine), director of a rural Maine orphanage, and his protégé Homer Wells (Maguire). Homer has grown up in the orphanage after two unsuccessful adoption attempts, and Larch takes him under his wing as a budding young physician. Ultimately Homer becomes Larch's assistant despite having no formal medical certifications. In addition to providing adoption services, Larch also discreetly performs abortions, an illegal procedure at that time. One such case is that of Candy Kendall (Theron) and her boyfriend Wally Worthington (Rudd), a World War II enlisted pilot on leave. After the abortion is performed Homer befriends the young couple and decides to leave the orphanage to learn the apple business (Wally's mother owns a nearby orchard and hires Homer as seasonal help). Larch is devastated at Homer's departure, and while they keep in touch, Homer is content with his new line of work, befriending the other migrant workers and developing a romantic relationship with Candy while Wally is away. The aging Larch, facing pressure from the orphanage's board of directors, fakes Homer's medical background to get them to approve him as an eventual successor, while Wally's impending return due to a crippling illness throws a wrench in Homer and Candy's romance.
This film feels like one of those old-fashioned critical darling melodramas, containing enough sensationalistic material for a checkout line novel, or a season of Degrassi High. Unwanted pregnancies, torrid affairs, incest, stabbings, suicide, drug addiction, child deaths, and a faked medical degree. If you were to assemble a stereotypical example of an Oscar bait movie from a checklist, it would look a lot like this. Hell, there's even a Forrest Gump-esque, gentle piano-driven score.
That's not to say there isn't some good material here; Theron shines as always, turning in probably the film's best performance, Delroy Lindo as the head of the migrant team is both likably wizened and an appalling dirtbag, Erykah Badu proves herself a very capable actor in only her second film credit, and Michael Caine is quite good, though his winning the Supporting Actor award over Tom Cruise in Magnolia is batshit insane to me. I'd have even preferred Haley Joel Osment winning for The Sixth Sense over this performance.
And that brings us to Tobey Maguire, whose work here struck me as rather odd. Homer is shown as a very warm person at the orphanage, and affable enough outside of it, but his interactions with Candy in particular are strangely wooden and awkward, the same way Forrest Gump didn't really know how to carry himself with Jenny. I get that Homer has led a very sheltered life thus far, but he's also met quite a lot of patients and had to deal with so many heavy medical issues, it just seemed Maguire leaned a little too far into the social awkwardness angle. He does rise to the occasion in a crisis though, befitting of a young man with a bevy of experience as a surgeon. Gump sprung to mind multiple times as I watched this film actually.
The Cider House Rules was a mixed film for me. I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it I guess. The principle characters are likable, particularly Candy and Dr. Larch (though Caine's American accent is pretty distracting), and there's something comforting about watching characters live the simple life. Homer is raised in an unconventional but loving environment where his talents are greatly needed, and he trades that in for another one as a farm hand. I found myself pondering how peaceful it must be to work at an apple orchard, for a little while anyway.
Oh, about the film's title - it refers to a list of rules posted in the cider house, where the migrants sleep. Most of the rules involve asking the help not to go up on the roof, but since the farm hands are illiterate, Homer reads the list to them. Then there's a hamfisted third-act speech by Delroy Lindo about "What's the point of posting rules if we can't even read them? We should have our own rules." The speech is somehow simultaneously on-the-nose, and in service of nothing of great substance. I get that it's supposed to be a metaphor for society's rules being written by detached governing bodies - draconian anti-abortion laws for example - but as a metaphor I found it pretty hackneyed. For one thing the cider house's rules are pretty reasonable. "Hey gang, smoking in bed is dangerous, as is operating heavy machinery while under the influence. And forget about sleeping on the roof, that's an accident waiting to happen." The whole thing just feels like a tacked-on thematic gimmick designed to make the novel and film seem more profound than they really are and trick various committees into throwing awards at them. See what I mean about stereotypical Oscar bait?
Anyway I thought enough of The Cider House Rules to give it a mild thumbs up. It's a fairly engaging story that's easy to sit through but unfortunately lacks the depth to make it a thinker. Know what movie should've been nominated that year instead? Magnolia.
I give the film *** out of ****.
No comments:
Post a Comment