Of Mice and Men

I was really confused about what to review for this month. I don’t know why that was, as I never had that sort of problem before, but I guess when I was looking at how many weeks there are, I was unsure what I could review to fill out the entire month with. Finally, I decided to review some films that dealt with special needs. That’s right, this month will be dedicated to some famous films I saw that talks about special needs in some shape or form. Let’s get started with the 1992 classic that is based on probably my personal favorite book I read in high school, “Of Mice and Men.”

“And will there be rabbits, George?” “Yeah, Lennie. There’ll be rabbits.”

There is a type of mark that is left with the most familiar lines in novels. Because we know them very well, we always smile when we see them, and they can break the reality of the story they’re trying to tell. Where has Hamlet not have been told without the famous “To be, or not to be?” quote.

Roger Ebert noted in his review, “In John Steinbeck's novel “Of Mice and Men,” made into an enduringly popular movie, the lines about the rabbits have became emblems for the whole relationship between George and Lennie -- the quiet-spoken farm laborer and the sweet, retarded cousin he has taken under his arm. I would not have thought I could believe the line about the rabbits one more time, but this movie made me do it, as Lennie asks about the farm they'll own one day, and George says, yes, it will be just as they've imagined it.”

Lennie is played by John Malkovich and George is played by Gary Sinise, who also directed this film, using an adaptation by Horton Foote. Ebert said, “The most sincere compliment I can pay them is to say that all of them - writer and actors - have taken every unnecessary gesture, every possible gratuitous note, out of these characters.” The story is as genuine and real as the original novel which was invented by Steinbeck. Because they don’t try to do anything fancy – don’t try to it make anything other than exactly what it is – they have a great success.

The time is the Great Depression. Men ride the trains, living in poor camps, looking for a day’s work. Two of them are George and Lennie, who together might make a perfect person, Lennie with his great strength and ease, George with his intelligence and astute. George does the thinking for them, and Lennie does a lot of the work. In the harvest season, they find themselves working on a place with a lot of guys, and a foreman named Curley (Casey Siemaszko) and Curley’s wife (Sherilyn Fenn, who is never named in the novel or in the film).

Curley’s wife is gorgeous, and she knows it. Ebert mentioned that Fenn “enjoys her little starring role on the farm -- likes to know the eyes of the men follow her as she walks across the yard, just as in Paris a woman walks a little differently past a cafe.” Curley, a cruel bully, does not enjoy that so much.

Lennie does not really understand every implication of the situation, but he knows he feels good when Curley’s wife asks him to stroke her soft brown hair. George warns him to stay away because she’s trouble. However, Curley’s wife makes that difficult. She enjoys teasing the slow giant, like he was a dog tied up away from contact. One day she hits a bad nerve, and despite him only trying to be nice to her, he gets confused and scared and doesn’t know his own strength. Then, the men and the dogs chase after him, and George won’t be able to handle this one with his fast thinking.

What is this story really about? Ebert answers, “There are a lot of possibilities, from the Lennie-as-Saint theory, to the feminist deconstruction that has no doubt been performed more lately. The highest praise I can give the filmmakers is that none of them seem to have any theories at all. They give us characters, a milieu, some events.” The main tragedy of the story is that these two men have a friendship that is relatable – they have an interaction where one takes with his needs and gives with his abilities – and when George isn’t there Lennie gets into trouble where he is not at fault, and the world beats them down.

Sinise admitted that Of Mice and Men was his favorite novel when he was younger. It led him to love Steinbeck, and he eventually played Tom Joad on stage in the famous Steppenwolf production of “The Grapes of Wrath.” Then he directed his first movie, “Miles from Home,” about two brothers who grow up on a farm in Iowa. One is more sober and responsible, the other more reckless. They can’t find the balance, and end up having lots of problems. The hidden theme is similar to the one in Of Mice and Men: Two men together make a relatable camaraderie, but neither is completely separatable. You can see how important this part is to Sinise. This is so important that in this movie he doesn’t play around with it. The story itself says all he wants to say.

If you have read the book and want to see a good adaptation of it, then see this movie. It almost brings the book to life in its entirety. There are parts from the book that were not included in the movie, but that is to be expected from an adaptation. I have yet to see a novel adaptation that includes everything in the film. Still, this is a good adaptation that everyone should check out since Sinise really treated this one with care. You will love it, I promise.

Look out next week when I look at one of my all-time favorite movies that I also saw in school in “Special Needs Month.”