A MAINE SUCCESS

EMPIRE FALLS
Directed by Fred Schepisi; written by Richard Russo, based on Russo’s book; cinematography by Ian Baker; original Music by Paul Grabowsky; edited by Kate Williams; production design by Stuart Wurtzel; art direction by John Kasarda; set decoration by Maria Nay; casting by Cameron Bonsey and Avy Kaufman
With: Ed Harris, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Helen Hunt, Aidan Quinn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright Penn, Dennis Farina, Kate Burton, William Fichtner, Theresa Russell, Miles Chandler, Danielle Panabaker, Lou Taylor Pucci, Trevor Morgan, Estelle Parsons, Jeffrey DeMunn, Larry Pine, Adam LeFevre, Carey Lowell, and Stephen Mendillo. Running time: 197 minutes

1/2

Reviewed by Joel Johnson

The most eagerly awaited opening of a film on Wednesday, May 18, 2005, was Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. Except in Waterville, Maine, where the results of the Empire Falls film shoot that had finished a year and a half earlier would be revealed in a special Maine premiere before local dignitaries and local cast and crewmembers. For reasons that are not totally clear, they also invited me. I would have the opportunity before the public-at-large to see what had been wrought from the two-plus months spent shooting the film during the fall of 2003.

The result is quite impressive. Typically, a book adapted to being a film requires liberal—perhaps even vicious—pruning that cuts storylines, characters, and scenes in order to meet the time constraint of being a 90–120 minute feature-length film. The resulting adaptation may be a very good film, but readers are often dismayed when the movies fails to tell the whole story or even the same story that the novel told. Sometimes the surgery is so radical that the film is disappointing because what is left, in the words of songwriter Jim Croce, is “a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone.” Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Russo was able to adapt his own novel, and the format of a two-night HBO broadcast with a total running time in excess of three hours allows him to bring nearly the entire novel to the screen. This is a tribute to Mr. Russo for the respect accorded to his work. Watching the resulting three-plus hours in a single uninterrupted viewing, one is struck by how solidly the film narrative maintains its momentum from start to finish. Despite the film’s length, I was never tempted to check my watch to gauge how much longer the film was going last. The involvement in the story is accomplished with little help from fistfights, shootouts, explosions, or car chases that serve to bolster flagging interest in many feature films. Most of the time, we are treated to a terrific ensemble cast acting just like real people trying to live with each other.

That cast includes many well-known lead actors such as Ed Harris, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Helen Hunt, Robin Wright Penn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Aidan Quinn. These are integrated with established character actors such as Larry Pine, Stephen Mendillo, and Jeffrey DeMunn as well as a group of very talented young actors such as Danielle Panabaker, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Miles Chandler. What is so critical to the film’s success is that each actor is given ample opportunity to create a character. The writing, the direction, and the editing all contribute to this happening. As noted, having enough time to tell the complete story is a significant factor. However, the actors still have to show us who they are and how they fit into the story. This they do exceptionally well. There are no weak links. There is no performance that distracts from or, even worse, derails the film’s storytelling. There are no star-power cameos that are more remarkable because of who the actor is than because of whom the actor is portraying. In fact, the actors give the film viewer insight into the story’s characters much more quickly and clearly than a reader may gain from reading Russo’s novel. Two examples come to my mind. Kate Burton makes the adult Cindy Whiting seem sympathetic when she just seems pathetic in the novel. Another example is the work done by Joanne Woodward and Carey Lowell as the elder and younger versions of Francine Whiting. They quickly convey the sinister and patronizing undertone in Francine’s interactions with main character Miles Roby.

Three actors portray Miles, but present-day adult Miles is played by Ed Harris. Harris plays a middle-aged man who seemingly has awakened in his forties to discover that he isn’t living the life he thought he would be. He still lives in the small, economically depressed Maine community Empire Falls where he grew up. He manages a struggling diner called the Empire Grill, owned by the aforementioned Francine Whiting, who has promised that he will one day own it. His marriage has ended with his wife Janine (Helen Hunt) running off with the local health club owner (Dennis Farina). His irascible father Max (Paul Newman) taunts him for his many fears as well as for Miles’s unwillingness to be more generous to (or be hoodwinked by) his father. Harris has a very understated role in which he can only subtly show his underlying emotions while remaining impassive in the face of others’ emotional barrages, such as his ne’er-do-well childhood neighbor Jimmy Minty (William Fichtner), who is now an Empire Falls police officer. Harris’s portrayal owes much more to how others see and act on Miles than it does to Harris’s own initiative in having Miles define himself. The film gives us the story of how his life has transpired—particularly in how it has been affected by the Whitings, the town’s wealthiest family.

The story is told with a series of flashbacks. One is a key episode from Miles’s childhood when he went on a vacation trip with his mother Grace (Robin Wright Penn) to Martha’s Vineyard. While his father languishes in jail for being “a public nuisance,” Miles and his mother spend time with a fellow vacationer who calls himself Charlie Mayne (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Gradually, Miles becomes discomfortingly aware that Charlie has an attachment to his mother. It isn’t until much, much later that Miles figures out exactly who “Charlie Mayne” really is. The film also shows another key period several years later when Miles is in college, and his mother is dying of cancer. It is here that Miles makes a critical decision that affects the direction of his life. We see how that decision continues to reverberate throughout his life to those he cares about most—his daughter Tick (Danielle Panabaker), his brother David (Aidan Quinn), and his longtime crush Charlene (Theresa Russell). Eventually, we become aware that some flashbacks do not show actual events, but instead show Miles’s mind processing the things that have happened in his life. This technique takes the film viewer into Miles’s interior life. Showing a character’s interior life is one of the biggest challenges facing a filmmaker. Some novels that strongly focus on that interior life are nearly impossible to successfully adapt for the screen. Larry Pine, who also portrays high school principal (and, for the novel’s readers, Miles’s friend growing up) Otto Mayer, provides narration that specifically allows the filmmakers to economically bookend the film with a prologue and an epilogue. The narration also helps tie the film together. It can be a risky technique. It can distract film viewers from sensing that they are seeing and experiencing what is happening to feeling that they are only being told what has happened. For me, the technique worked very well in providing narrative shorthand as well as enriching the film viewer with the interior perspective of a number of characters.

The problems the film has are the same as the novel. It stretches credibility that Miles remains in the dark about Charlie Mayne’s true identity until well into middle age. Russo also pushes the credibility envelope by incorporating into the story Mainers’ very deep respect for privacy in counterpoint to the small town environment “where everybody knows your name.” More problematic is both the novel’s and the film’s resolution. After creating an arc for Miles’s growing understanding of forces he has heretofore not acknowledged, the ending does not focus on how Miles acts to establish his own independence. A horrific event provides the impetus for Miles’s definitive call to action. Furthermore, Miles’s freedom is only assured by an act of God. These get Miles where he needs to go, but it seems as if the author lost confidence in his story about a small-town good guy coming to terms with his life, opting instead for a big explosive climax. Although it is underplayed in the film, this event is tonally dissonant from and could very easily overwhelm the rest of the film. This is especially true for those who have not read the novel.

There will be a few unanswered questions—a lingering sense of mystery—after the film ends. The book especially created a sense of doubt as to the parentage of Miles’s brother David whose conception seemed to coincide with Miles’s mother’s extramarital relationship with Charlie Mayne. The book plays this same wildcard, but the film, perhaps unintentionally, has done the book one better. The resemblance between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Miles Chandler as the young Miles Roby is striking enough to raise the possibility that it is the elder Roby boy and not the younger one whose parentage should be questioned. One certainly could speculate which of the brothers seems to share more personality traits with their putative dad.

Empire Falls is a terrific film for which the people of Maine deserve to be very proud. Do not be surprised if this film receives Emmy recognition. Richard Russo’s gift for capturing the rhythm of small-town life has been well translated to the screen by Mr. Schepisi, cast, and crew. Ian Baker’s cinematography has bathed Maine in a glorious autumnal glow that belies the darkness at the story’s heart. The actors made the correct choice in underplaying the Maine accent. A heavy Downeast accent á la Tim Sample doesn’t really fit the central Maine area where the film is set and can be a film’s undoing when it isn’t done well. Adopting a soft Maine accent or not doing an accent at all is far preferable to emitting a gratingly inauthentic accent throughout a movie. Ultimately, the film has a message, urging us to be courageous, to take command of our destiny, and to reach outside our comfort zone. The only more succinct interpretation of the lesson of Empire Falls is the Maine State Motto: Dirigo (I direct). 

 

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