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1. Hawthorne's book bites the big one. And I should
know. I used to teach it! I regret to say that America's literary
origins were primitive, at best. Melville, Hawthorne, and Cooper are
all but unreadable. Hawthorne is, in a cinematic sense, the worst of the three,
because the other two wrote books in which something happened
occasionally, so you could ignore their stilted prose and maybe even
make a good movie from their stories. Moby Dick is filled with infinitely
long digressions, but the basic story is good enough that we all
remember it nearly two centuries later, and Melville himself was so
deeply disturbed that he created memorable characters. Of course, I've
only read about a third of the damned book. After about 20 consecutive
chapters of whaling minutiae unrelated to the plot, I finished the
story with Cliff's Notes and Classics Comics. Cooper couldn't write
his way out of a paper bag, and his dialogue will make you laugh out
loud, but he had some great stories to tell. Hawthorne, on the other
hand, was basically
into interior processes. In this novel that means "guilt", so his stilted
writing is matched by a complete lack of action.
2. It doesn't matter, because this movie is almost
unrelated to the book. In fact, it is basically a hodge-podge of
colonial legends and lore, combining elements of Cooper, Hawthorne,
and even a bit of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. It is filled with
Indians who are betrayed by the scheming white men, horny women who
are believed to be witches, a last-minute rescue from the gallows,
and ultimately a happy ending in which Dimmsdale and Hester ride off
into the sunset on their buckboard, as if they were Curly
and Laurie in Oklahoma, fixin' to sing about their happy new life!
In the book, Dimmsdale was overwhelmed with guilt,
not only for what he had done, but for the fact that he had
hypocritically led the Puritans who prosecuted Hester when she
failed to name the father. After his sincere confession of guilt, he
bought the farm. The movie changed him from a hypocrite into a noble
romantic, and let him live happily ever after with his lover and
daughter.
The movie is sort of a prequel to the book, in which
we see the details of how Hester and the Reverend got it on in the
first place. Some of the events in the book are used in the film's
plotting, but the spirit of the book is not really retained. I'm not
sure it could be, except in a non-commercial movie targeted at a
small audience. This particular film hoped for a mainstream audience,
in fact required a mainstream audience to justify its $50 million
budget; although, with the benefit of hindsight, that hope now seems
to have been far-fetched, to say the least.
There are two redeeming virtues to the film: a very
fine performance by Gary Oldman as Dimmsdale, and what looks to be
beautiful cinematography. Why did I qualify it with a "looks to be"?
Because the DVD is a dark, blurry transfer that looks to have been
mastered from a camcorder bootleg. Of course, we can rule that out,
since nobody would go to the trouble of bootlegging this boring film.
I doubt if you could stay awake during the 135 minutes necessary to
hold that camcorder on your shoulder.
Even though the photography can be beautiful, I
wasn't very impressed with the way they used the footage. I'm not
sure how you feel about montages and corny dissolves, but of you
like those, you're gonna love Dimmsdale's sermon, in which his
echoing words are heard behind multiple images of his face fading in
and out in a romantic haziness, as if he were an additional
character in that song about Abraham, Martin, and John. |
Tuna's thoughts
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The Scarlet Letter (1995),
according to the best frame in the film during the opening
credits, claims to be "freely adapted from the book by Nathaniel
Hawthorne" Normally, that would be good news, as Hawthorn is far
from America's most accessible author. I left parochial school
for public in 11th grade, which meant that the last two years of
High School were pretty much review for me. Because of this, and
the fact that, for the first time, I was thrown in with
something far more interesting than academics - girls - I
concentrated on social development. English curriculum was
developed by the district, and was pretty rigid. 11th grade
English had to cover The Scarlet Letter, upon which a formal
term paper had to be written, and some other novel that I don't
recall for reasons that will become clear. To cut down on
cheating, half of the classes would do Scarlet Letter first
semester, and half second semester. So first semester, I was
faced with weeks of discussion on The Scarlet Letter, and the
requirement for a formal term paper. The policy was that if you
didn't do the term paper, you failed. This didn't really
conflict with my personal policy not to do formal term papers,
and I learned that summer school dropped the term paper
requirement because it was a six week course during the summer.
I had my solution, and to make sure I didn't get any further
grief from the teacher, I transferred to a different English
class for second semester. Unfortunately for me, second semester
was The Scarlet Letter semester in that class. So, I got to sit
through several weeks of classes about the Scarlet Letter. Since
there were two semesters in summer school, this was still not a
problem. However, U. S. History required a formal term paper.
So, first semester of summer school, I took English, which did,
you guessed it, The Scarlet Letter. Not only that, but it was a
district wide class, so I got to hear discussion from students
from every school in the district, and was also loaned Cliff
Notes and other critical reviews. Unfortunately, I had to take
second semester of 11th grade English in my senior year, but the
formal term paper had been moved to the other semester. The
teacher was in his first year, was rather insecure, and drooled.
The class was immediately after lunch, which was my nap time.
Not a problem. After three semesters devoted to The Scarlet
Letter, I just plain knew the book, all of the popular
interpretations, and many obscure ones. I trained myself, when
awakened, to stand and say, "Could you please repeat the
question?" I would walk into class, put my head on the desk, and
go to sleep. The teacher did his level best to catch me with a
question, but the truth was that I knew the book better than he
did.
All of this is to show that I know the novel, and there has
never been such freedom before as that taken by the folks who
adapted this screenplay. Given unlimited artistic license, they
could have created a good film. Bottom line, they didn't. The
transfer is as bad as the film, and is presented in a bare bones
4/3 ratio transfer that is noisier than a new VHS copy, dark,
and over-saturated. The film is universally reviled, and rightly
so. |
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The
Critics Vote
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The People
Vote ...
- IMDB summary.
IMDb voters score it an atrocious and well-deserved 4.3/10.
it scored fairly well only with girls under 18.
- with their dollars: a complete disaster.
Made for $50 million, it grossed $10 million. Whoever
greenlighted this project should have realized that in
advance.
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| IMDb
guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of
excellence, about like three and a half stars
from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm
watchability, about like two and a half stars
from the critics. The fives are generally not
worthwhile unless they are really your kind of
material, about like two stars from the critics.
Films under five are generally awful even if you
like that kind of film, equivalent to about one
and a half stars from the critics or less,
depending on just how far below five the rating
is. My own
guideline: A means the movie is so good it
will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not
good enough to win you over if you hate the
genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an
open mind about this type of film. C means it will only
appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover
appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you
like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if
you love the genre. F means that the film is not only
unappealing across-the-board, but technically
inept as well.
Based on this description, this
film is a D+. (Tuna: D) A film rescued from complete atrociousness by Oldman's
forceful, heartfelt performance and some good cinematography and
period reproduction. But a very long, boring, sappy, improbable story
that really has almost nothing to do with either 1660's New
England or Hawthorne's book. I did learn, however, that Puritan
women in the 17th century sometimes had surgically augmented
breasts.
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