For a movie that starts off with a wistful voice-over saying, “It was the last summer of my childhood” (or something to that effect), Hearts In Atlantis isn’t half-bad.
Based on a Stephen King novel of the same name, Hearts stars Anthony Hopkins as a mysterious old drifter named Ted Brautigan who takes a room for the summer at the house of young Bobby Garfield, played with a certain degree of class by relative newcomer Anton Yelchin. Having lacked a real father figure for several years, Bobby, in that oh-so-awkward state of prepubescent purgatory, latches onto Ted with void-filling glee. He hopes to avoid his self-obsessed and borderline illegally neglectful mother, Liz (the beautiful Hope Davis from Mumford who, to her credit, has never been more despicable), by splitting time between Ted and hanging with his friends, Carol (played by the radiant young Mika Boorem) and Sully (Will Rothhaar). Bobby learns many of life’s subtle little lessons, like how to beat a card hustler and how to fake a liking for root beer.
There is, to be sure, little in this film about growing up that hasn’t been done better elsewhere (the ultimate Stephen king adaptation, Stand By Me, blows it away in this department), but that’s not the point. See, Hearts and Ted are cloaked in such a well-crafted veil of half-sinister, half-sublime mystery that I was completely hooked right from the moment he mentions the “Low Men” who may be looking for Ted. Why? Well, that’s up to you to decipher, but there is much that can be debated here, good debate, too, not the sort that deals with whether Jaws 3 or 4 were worse movies (for the record, Jaws 3 was much better).
The debate here is the kind that comes from an absolutely incredible actor and an extremely gifted director (Scott Hicks, of Shine fame) deciding that they are going to take what is a somewhat weak screenplay and mold it into a rather unforgettable movie. Hopkins never really loses the Lecter-esque edge that has come to define him in this generation, and the hazy slo-mo cinemetography perfectly depicts the fleeting and forgotten moments of utterly simplistic and intangible bliss that we all had as children. Never before, I think, have these moments been put to film so effectively, and the end result is intoxicating. Given the current world situation, we could all use a little glimpse of pure innocence.
Now to one of the major flaws of this movie. Few will notice this, but it seems that there may have been a strange case of cold sores going around the Hearts set. Hopkins and Yelchin in almost every one of their scenes have clusters of not-so-well-covered lip crusties that I couldn’t ignore, though I tried many times to tell myself they went away. Let’s just hope that somewhere down the road Hopkins doesn’t come out and say that they symbolized the bond between Ted and Bobby. I don’t think even the most die-hard Hopkins fan would forgive him that one.
+ marc ruppel
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