The Cider House Rules (Miramax Collector's Series)

The Cider House Rules (Miramax Collector's Series)

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Movie Reviews of The Cider House Rules (Miramax Collector's Series)

Movie Review: an alternative view
Summary: 5 Stars

This criticism suggests a narrow view of what makes a movie work. It reproduces a familiar Hollywood blockbuster model where, beneath the surface, characters and plots tend to work in predictable ways. For all their obvious strengths, these blockbuster heroes are essentially passive. They move because they are pushed and pulled. Their lot is to solve or deal with things imposed upon them by history, circumstance and a preconfigured soul. Whatever motivations they have--deep reasons for behaving in one way rather than another--are not their own but received from above, and explained neither to themselves nor to the audience, presumably because no explanation is necessary.

This passiveness may go unnoticed behind bold elements in the film, and behind trappings that make the characters seem masters of themselves. A film may intoxicate with over-the-top theatrics, mind-blowing special effects, and heady drama and romance, all calculated to leave us reeling rather than critical. Characters appear determined and courageous; hard-hitting but also tender; flawed, yet graced with a redemptive justice that wins the day and our sympathy in the end. But passive characters can never be strong willed, determined, powerful or original because they lack the inner source these conditions entail. Remove the distractions and we would see only clones, characters whose so-called inner drive and originality are really just surrogates for the same, monotonous ethical standpoint, itself completely unexamined by the character or by the audience. No one wonders why so many characters from different movies all think in the same ethical terms, make the same choices, have the same sense of justice, make, recognize and fix the same ethical mistakes. Have they all been talking to each other?

In a ratings-driven commercial environment, this singular vision is also dogmatic: it does not merely represent one idea but silences alternatives. The Cider House Rules apparently got bad press from Ebert because it doesn't fit a standard mold. Its hero, Homer Wells, is more than just a billboard for stereotypes; instead, he dares to be an active agent in his own destiny. If a cloistered childhood supplied an urge to leave home, neither he nor the audience knows any more than that when it happens; you might have seen it coming but you don't know where it's going. All we know, and all he knows, is that he wants to see the ocean. Such is the lot of someone driven from within in a world too large for comprehension. Unlike the kind of character above, you feel that any future is possible for Homer, and that the things he will learn are up for grabs. You feel that his own will and openness, as much as external circumstance, lead to the events that happen: his time on the apple orchard, his love affair, and his return home.

His love affair is with a married woman, but because Homer's discovery is genuine and not dictated by an installed moral program, the usual moral taboos don't kick in the same way. He is not a sinner who must repent or else be despised, but a learner who will come to reframe past events within a developing conscience and a growing foundation of experience, whatever that turns out to be. He also learns about contradiction, a real kind that potted characters never face. When Homer discovers his boss's incest, the audience witnesses the genuine paradox of someone for whom a consistent morality isn't worked out yet. Homer genuinely abhors the incest, but cannot answer the boss when confronted with his own affair with a married woman. He can only repeat that incest is wrong.

At that point the issue of abortion returns. Homer faces a decision to recognize his training and the oath it implies, and thus comes full circle as a character who now understands a balance between the lure of new discovery and responsibility to one's own past. This new understanding leads him to return home again to fill the vacuum left by Dr. Larch. Fittingly, it is a position of greater responsibility to the orphanage than he ever had before. You know that the orphanage is again in good hands and has a bright future, precisely because Homer has made a journey to get there, a journey through experiences whose unpredictability was also their vitality.

This does not describe a movie with no destination, a journey without a purpose. It merely describes a movie with a refreshingly new, profoundly human purpose, one without many of the usual canned elements Hollywood so often depends on. In this sense I believe Ebert's review substantially missed the point. You do know what the movie was about and where it led by the time it ends. If the unpredictability of the meantime had been traded to satisfy usual expectations, it might have earned more stars but it would also have ruined the movie. As it stands, viewers can appreciate full, vital characters, top-notch acting in all key roles, and the work of a master storyteller flowing underneath. Too few Hollywood products can make that claim.

Summary of The Cider House Rules (Miramax Collector's Series)

Central to the story (set during World War II) is Homer (Tobey Maguire), a young man raised in a Maine orphanage, where the ether-sniffing Dr. Larch (Michael Caine) rules with benevolent grace while performing safe but illegal abortions. To expand his horizons, Homer follows a young couple (Charlize Theron, Paul Rudd) to do fieldwork on an apple farm, where his innocent eyes are opened to the good and evil of the world--and to the realization that not all rules are steadfast in all situations. By the time Homer returns to the orphanage, The Cider House Rules--which features one of Caine's finest performances--is memorable more for its many charming and insightful moments than for any lasting dramatic impact. Is Homer fated to come full circle in his kindhearted journey? It's left to the viewer to decide. --Jeff Shannon