Stephen King has an uncertain but indisputable
intelligence for being able to find horror in everyday situations. Roger Ebert said
in his review, “My notion is that he starts with a germ of truth from his own
life, and then takes it as far as he can into the macabre and the bizarre.” Take
“Misery,” for example, the story of a writer who finds himself a prisoner of
his self-proclaimed “No. 1 fan.” The writer has not finished a novel to her
approval, and show she has him in her house and he is writing under a very
painful and violent deadline.
Ebert mentioned, “I can only imagine what some of the
more peculiar fan letters of a writer like King must read like, and perhaps one
of them even suggested this story.” “Misery” is about a writer named Paul
Sheldon, played by James Caan, who has been using his talent for years with a
series of romantic historical novels about a character named Misery, who after
great successes and labors has finally been killed off. Having killing the
character he had come to hate, Sheldon stays in a Colorado lodge to write a “real”
novel, and when he finishes it, he puts it into his car and leaves a mountain
road in a blizzard, loses control of his car, and ends up injured and in a
snowstorm.
He might easily have died, but he’s rescued by an abrupt,
resourceful woman named Annie Wilkes, played by Kathy Bates, who gets him out,
takes him home, nurses him back to health, and then is outraged to learn he has
killed off Misery. That will not still well, and she holds her favorite writer
while he writes a sequel bringing Misery back to life.
The world thinks Sheldon is dead. We follow the search
for him, which consists of his literary agent (Lauren Bacall), the local
backwoods sheriff (the late Richard Farnsworth), and the sheriff’s wife
(Frances Sternhagen). They are basically the only other actors in the movie,
which develops mostly as a two-person cast between Caan and Bates.
They make an interesting team. Ebert noted, “Caan, who
has been hyper in some of his recent performances, is controlled and even
passive here, the disbelieving captive of a madwoman. Bates, who has the film's
key role, is uncanny in her ability to switch, in an instant, from sweet
solicitude to savage scorn.” Some of the things Stephen King makes her do to
Paul are so shocking that they could be a trap for an actor – an invitation to
overact. However, she somehow stays convincing inside her character’s insanity.
Ebert said, “The material in "Misery" is so
much Stephen King's own that it's a little surprising that a director like Rob
Reiner would have been interested in making the film. Reiner has started with
literary properties before - among them King's "Stand by Me" and
William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" - but his strength is in
putting a personal stamp on his films (which also include the cross-country
romance "The Sure Thing" and the fake documentary "This is
Spinal Tap").”
What he does with “Misery” is basically just respectful
– he “brings the story to the screen,” as the saying goes.
It is a good story, a natural, and it grabs us.
However, just as there is almost no way to make mistakes, so there’s hardly any
way to bring it above a certain level of inspiration. Ebert credits, “Many
competent directors could have done what Reiner does here, and perhaps many
other actors could have done what Caan does, although the Kathy Bates
performance is trickier and more special. The result is good craftsmanship, and
a movie that works. It does not illuminate, challenge or inspire, but it works.”
Apparently, Stephen King wrote this novel as a response
to fans who wanted him to continue to writing his signature novels when he
tried to branch out and wrote a fantasy. Even though I never read the book,
this film scared me when I watched it. I knew parts of the movie, but when
I saw the whole movie, I felt the impact that Paul was going through being stuck
in Annie’s cottage. This is every celebrity’s nightmare: to be held prisoner by
their obsessed fan. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for this movie, and she deserved it.
Also, the ending is just one of the best and most satisfying in film history. This film was one on my list of films I wanted to see, but I had never gotten around to it until this month. Now that I have seen it, I can finally say that I have seen this amazing film. You only need to see this film once, and it will stay with you forever. However, if you see it more than once, great. Check it out if you haven’t, if you have an HBO Max.
Thank you for reading this review tonight. Stay tuned
Friday for the finale of “M. Night Shyamalan Month.”
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