| Rating: | ★★★★★ |
| Category: | Movies |
| Genre: | Drama |
"Plain John" Adams in Paris? What's an impatient, rustic "cut-the-crap" Massachusetts lawyer doing trying to play a patient courtier in the salons and amongst the dolled-up flakes of the Court of Louis XVI? I guess it was his "reward" for bullying and cajoling and harping on the other reps in the Continental Congress to make a clean break with King George. Adams managed to get delegates from all 13 colonies to sign up for Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence". Maybe the other harassed Representatives just wanted to get the guy out of town...way out of town.
Did Adams have a good time in Paris? Did anybody with the title "count" or "countess" like him? Was he a bull in a China shop? No, no, and yes.
The film version of "John Adams"--from a Pulitzer Prize winning book by David McCollough--is a interesting portrayal of the little fellow most often given short-shrift among the major Founding Fathers.
George Washington is, or course, "The Icon": the austere "indispensable man" on the white horse, the grave Roman farmer/general Cincinnatus reborn. He's played in the series by David Morse, the actor some might recall who played the scary police detective in the Hugh Laurie show, "House". Morse is the most convincing Washington I've ever seen.
Jefferson is the "The Great Sphinx": a handsome and brainy guy who invents dozens of everything and redesigns his house a lot using slave labor. No ordinary plantation dude, "Master Tom" loves the French Jacobins and their Revolution, even when things get really bloody. Sure, slavery is a bad deal, but what can you do? OK, forget what you'd do--what would our bright boy Jefferson do? Shoot, he's order more wine and expensive and well-bind-ed books and read another volume of Voltaire while inventing Everlasting Gobstoppers candy ahead of Willy Wonka I guess. Stephan Dillane--another Brit posing as a colonial-- plays the Sage of Monticello. It's the relationship between Adams and Jefferson--friendly, hostile, and then friendly at the end, that is the second big "romance" of the series.
All the actors are very good in this series. The writing and the locations and style of the telling of this life is all first-rate. It's worth taking in, if you have any interest in American history. Laura LInney, by the way, is Abigail Adams and the film makes the point that she helped her husband immeasurably with his legal work--including a successful defense of the Redcoats charged with the Boston Massacre in 1770 and was his consultant on all his political actions, all the way up through his one-term presidency (1797-1801). Adams had a trained and adept mind, and of course he was a brave soul to sign the Declaration of Independence which could have been a death warrant very easily. But "Plain John" could get a little too pompous and excitable in debates with his political foes. Good thing Abigail was around for 54 years with him--theirs was the first and most intimate romance in this early American drama.
I watched the series twice. I have always been fascinated by Adams. Unlike many of the other Founding Fathers he was thrown into politics. The series was well done. I enjoyed every episode.
ReplyDeleteSounds an interesting series, which hasn't made it to our shores yet unfortunately. Perhaps its kicking round on DVD somewhere, I shall keep my eyes open for it. Thanks for the heads up Doug.
ReplyDeleteI think it's definitely something I'd want to see again. I didn't know as much about Adams as his peer contemporaries. I gather his cousin, Sam, was the major firebrand in the family.
ReplyDeleteI hope you get a chance to look it up, Iri Ani. There aren't that many films made about the American Revolution, and this one does a good job explaining the political factions that came after the Constitution was in place. The "dirty politics" of today were much the same then, only the insults were more literary.
ReplyDelete