Hearts In Atlantis «««½
PG-13, 101m. 2001
Cast & Credits: Anthony Hopkins (Ted Brautigan), Anton Yelchin (Robert 'Bobby'/'Bobby-O' Garfield), Hope Davis (Elizabeth 'Liz' Garfield), Mika Boorem (Carol Gerber, Molly), David Morse (Bobby Garfield - Adult). Screenplay by William Goldman based on a short story by Stephen King. Directed by Scott Hicks.
“It’s not all Atlantis.”
So says Ted Brautigan, the friendly and wise, but sad eyed old man who rents a room above the floor where his new friend, 11-year-old Bobby Garfield (Anton Yelchin) and his workaholic mother live (Hope Davis).
It’s in Atlantis; that imaginary magical world Brautigan says where for a while, at least, kids like Bobby can lose themselves in before they are forced to become grown-ups. I had feeling this was a world that for a minute. Brautigan wishes he could go back to.
There have been times when I have reminisced about my younger years before beginning high school and wish I could do it all over again.
I remember, for example, the small black and white three bedroom house we used to live in Chicago back in the early 1980s. I can recall all the times my friends and I either rode on the bike trails, played sports and built imaginary contraptions out of Legos during the summer.
There were the sleep overs and birthday parties and all the summer blockbuster movies my parents took me to see before everyone owned videocassette recorders; films like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Then there was the 80’s music some of us listened to that included Chicago, Men At Work, Madonna and Michael Jackson. Others preferred to hear Ozzy Osborne and Devo.
The term for it is called “nostalgia” and Hearts In Atlantis, based on one of many mammoth novels by Stephen King, brings a lot of that nostalgia back, albeit from another time.
The film opens with Bobby Garfield (David Morse) as an adult who, after learning that two childhood friends of his have died, reminisces back to their final summer together when he turned 11-years-old and met Ted Brautigan.
The picture has the look and feel of Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me (1986) which was also based on a short story King wrote.
Like Reiner, director Scott Hicks (Shine) takes us back to the late 1950s and early 1960s where kids awoke to the songs of Chubby Checker, Ritchie Valens and The Platters. Like the bike trails I used to ride in Chicago, there is a forest where Bobby and his friends, Carol (Mika Boorem) and Sully (Will Rothhaar) hang out.
The town itself is similar to the one in Stand By Me where it’s always quiet and nothing exciting ever seems to happen. There is also a local bully from school who enjoys taunting the three kids that’s probably an earlier caricature of the troublemaker Kiefer Sutherland played in Reiner’s film.
What makes Hearts In Atlantis memorable is the camaraderie Bobby and Ted share. Bobby looks up to the soft spoken old man like a father he never had or the father he wished he got to know. There is a particularly tender moment where Bobby is excited to hear Ted talk about a Chicago Bears football game he attended where it just so happens, his father was there too.
Ted reminds me of my grandparents who have often told me interesting stories about what it was like when they were growing up. He is the kind of person who’d tell an 11-year-old like Bobby that they shouldn’t frown about getting a free adult library card for their birthday from mom. Now they can graduate to reading classic novels like Tales of the City, Brautigan says. Or how there will come a time when he will receive “that first kiss by which all others will be judged” even if Bobby thinks the idea is gross.
The one notable difference is whereas Stand By Me was a drama, Hearts In Atlantis often delves into the supernatural where both Ted and Bobby share psychic powers.
There are shots of mysterious “Low men” who dress in business suits, drive expensive cars and are after Ted presumably because of his gift. We never quite find out who these people are. They could be FBI, CIA or perhaps just a product of King’s imagination when it comes to rogue agencies the government doesn’t really want us to know about.
A part of me wished the filmmakers hadn’t gone into those subplots and focused more on the relationship between Bobby and his two friends. Then I thought to myself, the idea of the “low men” represents all things that are bad in this world.
Hanging out with your best friends, singing oldies tunes and gathering around at campfires took on a whole different meaning when those four kids finally found the body of the young lad hit by a train in Stand By Me. The idea of looking for a dead body was not as fun as it sounded.
Hearts In Atlantis reminds us that both the imaginary world Brautigan spoke about and fond memories of the past only last a short while.
©10/10/01
PG-13, 101m. 2001
Cast & Credits: Anthony Hopkins (Ted Brautigan), Anton Yelchin (Robert 'Bobby'/'Bobby-O' Garfield), Hope Davis (Elizabeth 'Liz' Garfield), Mika Boorem (Carol Gerber, Molly), David Morse (Bobby Garfield - Adult). Screenplay by William Goldman based on a short story by Stephen King. Directed by Scott Hicks.
So says Ted Brautigan, the friendly and wise, but sad eyed old man who rents a room above the floor where his new friend, 11-year-old Bobby Garfield (Anton Yelchin) and his workaholic mother live (Hope Davis).
It’s in Atlantis; that imaginary magical world Brautigan says where for a while, at least, kids like Bobby can lose themselves in before they are forced to become grown-ups. I had feeling this was a world that for a minute. Brautigan wishes he could go back to.
There have been times when I have reminisced about my younger years before beginning high school and wish I could do it all over again.
I remember, for example, the small black and white three bedroom house we used to live in Chicago back in the early 1980s. I can recall all the times my friends and I either rode on the bike trails, played sports and built imaginary contraptions out of Legos during the summer.
There were the sleep overs and birthday parties and all the summer blockbuster movies my parents took me to see before everyone owned videocassette recorders; films like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Then there was the 80’s music some of us listened to that included Chicago, Men At Work, Madonna and Michael Jackson. Others preferred to hear Ozzy Osborne and Devo.
The term for it is called “nostalgia” and Hearts In Atlantis, based on one of many mammoth novels by Stephen King, brings a lot of that nostalgia back, albeit from another time.
The film opens with Bobby Garfield (David Morse) as an adult who, after learning that two childhood friends of his have died, reminisces back to their final summer together when he turned 11-years-old and met Ted Brautigan.
The picture has the look and feel of Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me (1986) which was also based on a short story King wrote.
Like Reiner, director Scott Hicks (Shine) takes us back to the late 1950s and early 1960s where kids awoke to the songs of Chubby Checker, Ritchie Valens and The Platters. Like the bike trails I used to ride in Chicago, there is a forest where Bobby and his friends, Carol (Mika Boorem) and Sully (Will Rothhaar) hang out.
The town itself is similar to the one in Stand By Me where it’s always quiet and nothing exciting ever seems to happen. There is also a local bully from school who enjoys taunting the three kids that’s probably an earlier caricature of the troublemaker Kiefer Sutherland played in Reiner’s film.
What makes Hearts In Atlantis memorable is the camaraderie Bobby and Ted share. Bobby looks up to the soft spoken old man like a father he never had or the father he wished he got to know. There is a particularly tender moment where Bobby is excited to hear Ted talk about a Chicago Bears football game he attended where it just so happens, his father was there too.
Ted reminds me of my grandparents who have often told me interesting stories about what it was like when they were growing up. He is the kind of person who’d tell an 11-year-old like Bobby that they shouldn’t frown about getting a free adult library card for their birthday from mom. Now they can graduate to reading classic novels like Tales of the City, Brautigan says. Or how there will come a time when he will receive “that first kiss by which all others will be judged” even if Bobby thinks the idea is gross.
The one notable difference is whereas Stand By Me was a drama, Hearts In Atlantis often delves into the supernatural where both Ted and Bobby share psychic powers.
There are shots of mysterious “Low men” who dress in business suits, drive expensive cars and are after Ted presumably because of his gift. We never quite find out who these people are. They could be FBI, CIA or perhaps just a product of King’s imagination when it comes to rogue agencies the government doesn’t really want us to know about.
A part of me wished the filmmakers hadn’t gone into those subplots and focused more on the relationship between Bobby and his two friends. Then I thought to myself, the idea of the “low men” represents all things that are bad in this world.
Hanging out with your best friends, singing oldies tunes and gathering around at campfires took on a whole different meaning when those four kids finally found the body of the young lad hit by a train in Stand By Me. The idea of looking for a dead body was not as fun as it sounded.
Hearts In Atlantis reminds us that both the imaginary world Brautigan spoke about and fond memories of the past only last a short while.
©10/10/01
No comments:
Post a Comment