BEFORE: Riffing off of "Sophie's Choice", this week's theme, for lack of a better term, will be "longish, arty movies about the American experience". Newish classics, if you will, based on growing up in America, or immigrating to the U.S. And this enables me to send Birthday SHOUT-out #49 to Tobey Maguire, last seen in "The Ice Storm", born June 27, 1975. And "The Ice Storm" also handily provides the link from "Sophie's Choice", through Kevin Kline.
THE PLOT: A compassionate young man, raised in an orphanage and trained to be a doctor there, decides to leave to see the world.
AFTER: Well, it's impossible to discuss this film without taking on the thorny issue of abortion, since the film goes out of its way several times to legitimize the issue. The doctor at the orphanage (which doubles as a clinic for pregnant women) performs them, despite their illegal-ness in Maine at the time, constantly justifying the practice with logic and mental arguments for their necessity. To back the doctor up, the movie presents us with a woman who dies from a back-alley abortion, and another character whose pregnancy is the result of incest/rape, in case any pro-life conservatives in the audience haven't been swayed yet.
So it's essentially a one-topic movie. Oh, sure, things happen and characters develop and some orphans get adopted and some don't, but the plot keeps coming back to the necessity of abortions. And the debate causes a riff between Tobey Maguire's character and Dr. Larch, played by Michael Caine (last seen in "The Fourth Protocol")
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, there's some nice symbolism here, as seen in the rules mentioned in the title. (And here I thought that someone just really liked living in the cider house, by saying "The cider house RULES!") Within the cider house, there is a list of rules posted on the wall, prompting a collective "Ahh, I get it now!" from the audience. And some of the rules are "Don't go up on the roof to sleep", and "Don't go up on the roof to eat lunch". One character wonders, why doesn't it just say, "Don't go on the roof"?
Because that would be as simplistic as saying "Don't have an abortion", that's why. The binary pro-life/pro-choice argument is complicated by things like incest, rape, genetic disorders, and just plain personal freedom. And so we have people making rules in this country who want to add amendments for every little thing, until the law no longer makes any logical sense. But you know what? The people who make the rules don't live in the Cider House. And the people who live in the Cider House are going to do what they want anyway, even if it's not safe to do so.
So I see symbolism in the farm workers, representing the U.S. citizens, and the rule-writing orchard-owners, representing the government. Was that intentional?
Unfortunately it was all a little one-note and ho-hum for me. This could turn out to be a very long week...
Also starring Charlize Theron (last seen in "Hancock"), Delroy Lindo (last seen in "Clockers"), Kathy Baker (last seen in "The Right Stuff"), Jane Alexander (last seen in "City Heat"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "Knocked Up"), Erykah Badu, with cameos from Kieran Culkin, Heavy D. and J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Up in the Air" - weird to see the future J. Jonah Jameson eating dinner with the future Peter Parker).
RATING: 3 out of 10 lobster traps
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