The Political and the Personal

Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney have played a husband and wife twice on the screen. The first time was in The Nanny Diaries (2007), which I watched on a transcontinental flight thinking I'd get a nice, light, fun movie from the creative team behind the excellent American Splendor. The Nanny Diaries is one of the worst movies of the decade. Linney realizes what a piece of unemotional, insulting, stereotypical dreck the script is and professionally goes through the motions. Giamatti, whose role is thankfully almost a cameo, merely grates.

The second time was a year later, when they played the second president and his "dearest friend" Abigail in Tom Hooper and Kirk Ellis's seven-part HBO adaptation of David McCullough's John Adams.

In the beginning of Part Four, John urges Abigail to come to Paris, where he is helping forge the peace treaty with England after the Revolution...which he spent abroad, alone, trying to be a diplomat and failing because nobody can realte to him and he'll only listen to Abigail. A carriage takes her to the front of the house he's renting. He sheepishly walks through the door, takes her hand, and leads her through the rooms, making occasional, embarrassed comments. Finally, they can bear it no longer...they kiss, rip off their clothes, tenderly clawing at each other the way teenagers do in movies which are celebrating the "good" loss of virginity. Then Abigail stops him short. She's been raising the kids by herself, she never heard from him, and she's angry. John, who has toadied to no one at all, GETS DOWN ON HIS KNEES and confesses his shame of having to write of his failures. She can't stay mad at him. They cling to each other in this empty room...

And I'd stack that scene up against any great movie as a whole. against a million Nanny Diaries, and it would win every time.

So as might be imagined, John Adams as a whole is one of the best American productions of my lifetime and a reminder of why we should thank HBO for understanding how to make exceptional television. At one point Adams says that no one will ever be able to write a history of the Revolution. In regard to this story, a movie could not have done it...it would have rushed through so much of Adams's life and concentrated on whatever spectacle it could find (And the miniseries has European costume drama, naval battles, massacres, cities being constructed...could consulting producer Graham "Speed" Yost have had a hand in this?). Television works because of intimacy, of putting you in a private audience with the characters and seeing them warts and all. When Adams says the Revolution may not be recorded, his fear is that people will not understand the wants and needs and deepest desires of those who wanted independence so badly, will not understand what they were fighting for and why they were fighting. Ellis's teleplays, which pack 57 years into a little over 7 hours, are like ants, burrowing deep into people and events and finding every nook and cranny which made the people, which brought about the event. I feel like I now UNDERSTAND the Revolution after watching John Adams as opposed to only knowing about it....that it was fought by men who had made lives for themselves in a new world, who wanted their children and grandchildren to live lives of their own, as they pleased, and who justly felt they needed above all to shape this destiny with no interference.

And thankfully, John Adams does not descend into essay or polemic. Ellis balances Adams's personal story with the grand political events, the story of a family man who had his faults and suffered heartbreak, but died very content after raising fine children, making great friends, and most of all, having a wonderful marriage.

Hooper directs with not much "style" but a certainty of what to do in each scene, and HBO did not skimp on production values...it looks better than a lot of modern movies. But most of all, the miniseries is perfectly cast. Giamatti, an extraordinary actor, has never been better. Without ever descending to the porcine level he waxes eloquent monologue, rages, laughs, cries, and commands our attention...but is he better than Linney, whose eyes stay level and whose voice almost never rises, but speaks every word with nuances upon nuances of intelligence and passion? No wonder John fell for Abigail, and no wonder Giamatti and Linney won every acting award there was. But the same care goes into the supporting cast: reserved, dignified, just-emotional-enough Stephen Dillane, who works all too rarely on these shores, is a superb Thomas Jefferson, Danny Huston a firebrand Sam Adams, Zeljko Ivanec never better with his trademark "all-knowing and far too sad" demeanor as John Dickinson, Rufus Swell dashing and sly as Alexander Hamilton. (Why is he always so villified?) And that great English chameleon Tom Wilkinson portrays the good Dr. Franklin in a way Ben himself would have delighted in, twinkly, racy, irreverent, and sage...and after her Oscar-nominated debut as a filmmaker, it's great to see Sarah Polley in front of the camera again as the only Adams daughter. My one mild complaint is with David Morse, who is very good, but unfortunately his make-up job as Washington draws more attention than the performance itself.

My only other tiny complaint in an otherwise near-perfect saga: when Polley is operated on for cancer, Giamatti is pacing the floor...and Linney coolly says, "For God's sake, John, sit down." And 1776 crashed into my head for what should have been a poignant moment.


Also...it's great to discover a work by one of your favorite artists you were hitherto unfamiliar with. Last night on Y103, I heard the one really successful Bruce Springsteen song I had never caught on the radio before. Asked to make an extra contribution to the chart-topping We Are the World album, Springsteen offered a live version of Jimmy (The Harder They Come) Cliff's "Trapped." Mournful Roy Bittan keyboards, thunder-from-the-mountain Max Weinberg drums, and Springsteen sounding desperate, lovelorn, raging at the entire world, and yet clinging to hope, all in five minutes. What lends "Trapped" extra weight is that Cliff's lyrics could equally refer to a terrible romantic relationship or someone oppressed by the social and political instituions which dominate so many of us. Maybe even both. I listened to it three more times after that on YouTube...it's too beautiful.

"Well it seems like I've been playing the game way too long
And it seems the game I played has made you strong
Well when the game is over, I won't walk out the loser
And someday I'll walk out of here again...

Now it seems like I've been sleeping in your bed too long
And it seems like you've been meaning to do me harm
But I'll teach my eyes to see beyond these walls in front of me
And someday I'll walk out of here again...

But now I'm trapped..."

(Cue yells and instruments-up-to-eleven.)