MOVIE REVIEW : Dank, Dogged Realism From ‘Ethan Frome’

Edith Wharton’s 1911 novella “Ethan Frome” is a powerhouse downer. In a little less than 200 pages, she conveys a sense of bleakness so complete that it borders on the sadistic. Wharton’s finely limned sentences are deceptively decorous; she uses her sensitivities to spook you.

The movie that has been made from the novella, starring Liam Neeson as Ethan, has been a long time coming. Hollywood has been trying to film it for more than half a century. (Bette Davis and Gary Cooper, for example, were involved in an aborted project in the ‘40s.) It’s easy to understand why “prestige”-minded movie producers might be attracted: The novel is a “classic” tragic love affair--rapturously desolate.

Ethan, whom we are first introduced to as a crippled man in his 50s, hobbles about his hometown of Starkfield, Mass., and keeps to himself. We move back in time to discover the source of his mute agony. He once had dreams of leaving the village to become an engineer but family circumstances held him down. His wife, Zeena, who cared for Ethan’s ailing mother, has become an embittered hypochondriac. Zeena’s distant cousin, Mattie, who arrives to help out the household, is such a fragile soul that Ethan falls desperately in love with her. Their fugitive moments together are wracked with doom because they recognize their passion is futureless. They can’t conquer the fated circumstances of their lives.

This sort of thing can work as literature but as a movie, the relentless gloom and long, frozen stares and one-second-at-a-time pacing can make you a little batty. The characters in “Ethan Frome” (selected theaters) are working out a kind of penance, and that feeling transfers to the audience. The moroseness we experience is meant to serve a higher cause. Wharton may not have endorsed the spiritual benefits of despair but the filmmakers, director John Madden and screenwriter Richard Nelson, certainly do.

As Ethan, Neeson first hobbles into view with a world-class limp--it’s the kind of limp that can win you an Oscar. He’s better in his pre-limp mode, in the flashback portion of the film. Neeson doesn’t try for a star-turn; he wants to convey Ethan’s banked longings, and if he’s not totally successful, it’s probably because the role is so lumpish and reactive, so full of thwarted emotion, that it never really allows the human being to emerge.

With Wharton, the three characters were so emblematic with grief that they (intentionally) never quite come to life. They have the gravity of hooded figures in a passion play. (When you read the book and imagine it as a movie, it calls up a slow, silent classic.) The movie (rated PG for thematic content) softens these sufferers and, in the case of Zeena, even works up a bit of sympathy for her severities. Joan Allen is such an extraordinarily subtle actress that Zeena’s sickness comes across as a kind of last-ditch flirtation; it’s her only way of securing Ethan’s indulgence. Zeena in the movie seems less cruel than desperate; she’s sick all right--soul sick.

As Mattie, Patricia Arquette lacks the ethereal fragility that one imagines from the book but her ruddy-cheeked ripeness doesn’t seem out of place beside Neeson’s long-boned frame. They have a transcendent pioneer ruggedness together. There’s a lovely moment when she sings to Ethan and he’s dumbstruck; he’s stricken by the disparity between her winsome desire to please and the glum, boxed-in life he leads.

“Ethan Frome” needed a more poetic approach to keep it from descending into a dreary funk. Madden, a stage director who also worked for British television and American Playhouse (where this project originated), doesn’t have a wide imaginative range. He’s content to film the story in a straightforward way that makes it seem less gruesome and creepy than it really is. Classic works of American literature are often weirder and more disturbing than the movies that are derived from them; what often survives in an adaptation of, say, Faulkner, Poe or James, is the bare bones of plot. What’s missing from the films is the author’s way of seeing.

“Ethan Frome” is so bare to begin with that it might have survived its transfer to the screen if the filmmakers had sought to express the lyricism in Wharton’s stark, dark moodiness. Instead they opt for dank, dogged realism. You watch these people suffer without wanting to suffer right along with them.

‘Ethan Frome’

Liam Neeson: Ethan Frome

Joan Allen: Zeena Frome

Patricia Arquette: Mattie Silver

Katharine Houghton: Mrs. Hale

An American Playhouse Theatrical Films and Miramax Films presentation. Director John Madden. Producer Stan Wlodkowski. Executive producers Lindsay Law and Richard Price. Screenplay by Richard Nelson, based on the novel by Edith Wharton. Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski. Editor Katherine Wenning. Costumes Carol Oditz. Music Rachel Portman. Production design Andrew Jackness. Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG (thematic elements).