MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Simple Twist’: Charming Update of ‘Silas Marner’

Nobody ever accused Steve Martin of not taking chances, and with the captivating heart-tugger “A Simple Twist of Fate” he took the all-out plunge of basing this film on no less than George Eliot’s 1861 novel, “Silas Marner”--that grim morality play most of us did not escape having to read in high school.

What Martin, as star as well as writer, and director Gillies MacKinnon have created in their very free adaptation is a family film that might be best described as a serious comedy, not unlike “Roxanne,” Martin’s spin on “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Not all the risks they take with shifting tones, in setting the near-incredible against the painfully real, pay off, but on the whole they’ve come through with an involving entertainment suffused with genuine emotion.

It’s not hard to understand why Martin was attracted to a warhorse of Victorian literature, for in the 19th Century, writers confidently took on grand themes, drew rich characters and made bold use of coincidence to evoke a sense of the workings of fate. Those novels still live, but as the 20th Century draws to a close, they’re almost impossible to write in such a fragmented society with so little faith in God and in an uncertain universe.

Within a few minutes of the film’s start, Martin’s Michael McCann, a happy, dedicated schoolteacher in a Southern small town, finds himself utterly devastated when his wife finally confesses that the baby she is expecting isn’t his. The next thing we know is that he has become a solitary, reclusive cabinetmaker who, like Silas Marner, devotes his evenings to surveying his ever-expanding collection of gold coins. Whoosh!--the coins disappear; whoosh! a golden-haired toddler wanders into McCann’s home one wintry night.

It in fact took lots more than one twist of fate to bring together the lonely man and the seemingly abandoned child, involving intricate plotting that pays off later on. The heart of the film is in its father-and-daughter relationship. It is a pleasure to watch McCann come alive, thanks to the little girl whom he adopts and who grows into a bright, pretty and independent-thinking 10-year-old, Mathilda (Alana Austin, whose younger sister Alyssa plays Mathilda at 5). It is in amusing Mathilda that Martin is able to play the comedian, but the film celebrates above all the joy that loving a child can bring.

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No idyll lasts forever, and Mathilda now finds herself responding to a nearby rich senator (Gabriel Byrne) and his wife (Laura Linney), who are childless and begin showering the child with attention and even the gift of a horse. You don’t want to give too much away, but the day looms when the senator feels he can actually take Mathilda from McCann in a custody battle.

It’s in the courtroom scenes that Martin and MacKinnon hit a snag. Up until then they’ve been successful in playing a contemporary sensibility against solid Victorian values, but in deflecting the cliches inherent in courtroom drama they become facetious. The result is the emergence of an artificial, contrived quality epitomized by Catherine O’Hara, heretofore seen as a sensible local antiques dealer who secretly adores McCann, making a total fool of herself on the witness stand. As talented as O’Hara is, she’s hard put to make credible a smart woman suddenly turned into an idiot. Luckily, yet another not-so-simple twist of fate saves the scene and the film just in the nick of time.

“A Simple Twist of Fate” is a handsome production with a soaring score that has a substance that can be derived only from an array of exceptionally well-written, well-played individuals. Byrne and Linney could so easily have been painted as villains of the deepest dye but instead have been given human dimension; you’re not asked to like them but you are able to understand them. Aside from the courtroom scene, O’Hara shines, and Stephen Baldwin is wonderfully sleazy as Byrne’s no-good younger brother. But it’s Martin and the little girls who play Mathilda who win your heart.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for a drug-related situation. Times guidelines: There is a subplot involving drugs that is intense, but the film as a whole is suitable for older children .

‘A Simple Twist of Fate’

Steve Martin: Michael McCann

Gabriel Byrne: John Newland

Laura Linney: Nancy Newland

Alana Austin: Mathilda McCann

Catherine O’Hara: April Simon

Stephen Baldwin: Tanny Newland

A Buena Vista release of a Touchstone Pictures presentation. Director Gillies MacKinnon. Producer Ric Kidney. Executive producer-writer Steve Martin. Suggested by George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” Cinematographer Andrew Dunn. Editor Humphrey Dixon. Costumes Hope Hanafin. Music Cliff Eidelman. Production designer Andy Harris. Art director Tim Galvin. Set decorator Maria Nay. Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.