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The gods of serendip threw this my way when I had The Good German in the house, but the goddess of life (or the facsimile of life that is editing) meant that I didn't have time to do a Tobey Maguire double bill. I like him as an actor - especially Pleasantville and Wonderboys and he even makes horse-racing interesting in Sea biscuit; I can take or leave the Spider-Man trilogy. He tends to play the good hearted naif who takes a stand - The Good German casts him against type. So, here he is in a John Irving adaptation
Lasse Hallström, The Cider House Rules (1999)
Dr Larch (Michael Caine) is the patriarch at a orphanage, and acts as surrogate father to Homer Wells (Maguire). Whilst Homer is happy to carry out medically assisted births, he draws the line at abortions, to Larch's annoyance. After one abortion, Homer leaves the orphanage to become an apple picker.
Put like this, it seems a little bald; it's a Bildungsroman, of Homer coming into wisdom, perhaps when it's too late, and realising that there's no place like home, after all. The actual rules of the title, relatng to the apple picking farm Homer works on, seem rather irrelevant - and presumably have more resonance in the Irving novel (which I've read part of) which this is stripped out of.
It's also very sweet - first Larch then Homer read Dickens to the poor li'l mites, the nightly ritual of Larch saying "Good night you princes of Main, you Kings of New England", the cuteness of the orphans, the skipping over any racial politics after a brief nod in the treatment of the apple pickers. It's set during the Second World War, but feels a decade or two earlier. Irving's novels have a bit more random cruelty than this - theer are heart stopping moments in The World According to Garp (castration) and A Prayer for Owen Meany (slicing a finger off),say, but here the narrative holds back; there is a death or two, a character is incapacitated and there are the abortions, but it's not the same kick in the guts.
Maguire's character has a limited view of the world from his life in the orphanage - he loves movies but has only seen King Kong, doesn't get drive-ins and is effectively seduced. You just know he's goign to have to perform an abortion before the end of the film, the only question is whose - and I guessed wrong about who.
However, by the end I was snuffling away, and wiping back the tears. Sweat. Caine, as always, is immensely watchable and on Oscar-winning form, although his accent is the strangest I heard since... the last time Caine had to do an accent.
Totals: 32 [Cinema: 12; DVD: 19; TV: 1]
Lasse Hallström, The Cider House Rules (1999)
Dr Larch (Michael Caine) is the patriarch at a orphanage, and acts as surrogate father to Homer Wells (Maguire). Whilst Homer is happy to carry out medically assisted births, he draws the line at abortions, to Larch's annoyance. After one abortion, Homer leaves the orphanage to become an apple picker.
Put like this, it seems a little bald; it's a Bildungsroman, of Homer coming into wisdom, perhaps when it's too late, and realising that there's no place like home, after all. The actual rules of the title, relatng to the apple picking farm Homer works on, seem rather irrelevant - and presumably have more resonance in the Irving novel (which I've read part of) which this is stripped out of.
It's also very sweet - first Larch then Homer read Dickens to the poor li'l mites, the nightly ritual of Larch saying "Good night you princes of Main, you Kings of New England", the cuteness of the orphans, the skipping over any racial politics after a brief nod in the treatment of the apple pickers. It's set during the Second World War, but feels a decade or two earlier. Irving's novels have a bit more random cruelty than this - theer are heart stopping moments in The World According to Garp (castration) and A Prayer for Owen Meany (slicing a finger off),say, but here the narrative holds back; there is a death or two, a character is incapacitated and there are the abortions, but it's not the same kick in the guts.
Maguire's character has a limited view of the world from his life in the orphanage - he loves movies but has only seen King Kong, doesn't get drive-ins and is effectively seduced. You just know he's goign to have to perform an abortion before the end of the film, the only question is whose - and I guessed wrong about who.
However, by the end I was snuffling away, and wiping back the tears. Sweat. Caine, as always, is immensely watchable and on Oscar-winning form, although his accent is the strangest I heard since... the last time Caine had to do an accent.
Totals: 32 [Cinema: 12; DVD: 19; TV: 1]
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