REVIEWS

The Cider House Rules
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December 10, 1999 
By Patrick Z. McGavin
The Hollywood Reporter

JOHN IRVING's sixth and finest novel, The Cider House Rules, is one of those resonant, inventive works of literature that persistently works against being reconfigured for the movies. LASSE HALLSTROM is a fine director, and Irving has adapted his own novel, but their resulting collaboration is deeply flawed. It is neither the novel nor a satisfying alternative to the novel but rather bits and pieces imperfectly strung together.

The movie is certainly not an embarrassment, but the incandescent prose -- a freewheeling mixture of social portrait, outrageous incident and scabrous commentary -- has been lost in its transfer to the screen. The edges have been dulled, made more palatable for mainstream audiences.

The stylistic audacity of the novel -- the loopy structure, the Nabakovian wordplay -- jumps off the page, but Hallstrom would have to be ORSON WELLES to vivify that prose on screen. With its intriguing cast, strong production values and the full marketing weight of Miramax, the movie will make an impression, but the varying tone, leisurely pace and difficult material don't augur a long life in theaters.

The best passages are in the first third, set during World War II in the snowbound, brooding Maine landscape. It's the site of St. Cloud's orphanage, a holding ground for unwanted children where its top administrator and only doctor, Wilbur Larch (MICHAEL CAINE), performs illegal abortions. The initial story establishes the deeply elemental, paternalistic affection Larch holds for Homer (TOBEY MAGUIRE), a twice-adopted, twice-returned child who becomes Larch's aide-de-camp. An ostensible doctor despite never even entering high school, Homer naturally begins to feel claustrophobic and unfulfilled staying at the orphanage and begins avidly seeking out new experiences.

Saved from induction because of his defective heart, Homer gets his chance to escape when a beautiful young woman, Candy (CHARLIZE THERON), and her boyfriend, Wally (PAUL RUDD), an Air Force pilot, turn up at St. Cloud to terminate her unwanted pregnancy. Homer leaves with them and takes a job working Wally's family farm as an apple picker.

Wally's understated grace and empathy allow him to quickly insinuate himself into the lives of the black migrant workers, headed by Mr. Rose (the superb DELROY LINDO) and his daughter, Rose (ERYKAH BADU). The book is much more forceful on 1940s racism; the film never even touches on the subject. More problematic, the movie begins to tell separate stories, grounding Homer's story as a coming-of-age tale against the bleak realities of St. Cloud, which the state board of health is threatening to close unless Larch brings in additional medical personnel.

Dramatically, the story loses momentum. Worse yet, it becomes inert and closed off. With Wally stationed in the Pacific theater, Homer is finally free to consummate his deep attraction to Candy. But their scenes don't have any electricity or heft between the pair. Theron is constantly being summoned up in magazines as "the next great thing," but she is a curiously remote, opaque performer whose absence of expression denies a fuller emotional investment. In the other dominant sections -- Homer's relationship with the migrant workers -- the necessary cutting and reshaping of the novel obliterates the development of the personal relationships and drops key events, so a devastating turn in the narrative seems patently unreal and dramatically unmotivated.

When the landmark theater production of 'Cider House' opened at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum last year, the running time was eight hours. As obvious as that kind of length is commercially impossible here, that appears to be the only way to adequately convey the peculiar interior logic, narrative depth and brilliance of the novel.

Hallstrom's American films have outlined his strengths and weaknesses, his ability to conjure up community and culture, an affinity for unorthodox characters and offhanded narrative structures, but all four of the American-made movies suffer from a detached outsider perspective that comments on the action without ever fully getting inside the material. There are some haunting images here -- Candy and Homer alone in a deserted drive-in theater, an imperiled boy entrapped in a special breathing apparatus -- but the incidental detail, the ecstatic flow of language are lost.

Technically, Oliver Stapleton's impressionistic photography is the film's finest, most assured element. Unfortunately, Rachel Portman's score is inflated and overscaled, and Hallstrom relies on it much too frequently to overwhelm the audience.