For best-selling author Paul Sheldon (James Caan), "Misery" becomes hearing a pudgy, middle-aged woman (Kathy Bates) say "I'm your number one fan." Paul has been writing best-selling novels about 19th-century persevering heroine Misery Chaistain, a series that has made him rich and famous, but which he has come to hate, feeling they've stifled his talents as an author. "I haven't been a writer since I got into the Misery business," he bitterly claims. Now he has just finished a mainstream novel he hopes will change the direction of his career. As usual, he's stayed at the same lodge in the Rockies while he writes, his wife and daughter at home back East. But on the way down from the snowy mountain, his car plunges off the road and he's badly injured. Fortunately, his Number One Fan was right there, and she takes him back to her own isolated farm; she's a former nurse, and fixes him up. His life is saved, right? Wrong.
It's all too true that Stephen King's books only rarely make very good movies, but no one--including King, whose directorial debut "Maximum Overdrive" was one of the worst of the lot--seems to really know why the films turn out poorly. "Carrie," "The Dead Zone," "Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" were good movies; "The Shining" is terrific, but it's not Stephen King, it's Stanley Kubrick. So far, really only "Stand By Me" and the miniseries "The Stand" managed to capture the flavor of King's deceptively "ordinary" prose (it's no such thing) and be a good movie.
However, "Misery," a shocking, funny suspense-horror thriller based on one of King's very best books is outstanding, Rob Reiner's best movie as director to date. It can hardly be a coincidence that "Misery" was directed by Reiner, who also did "Stand By Me." In terms of content, it's miles upon miles from Reiner's other films, almost all of which are comedies; his next film after "Misery" was "A Few Good Men," also a drama, also very good. Though there are many surprising laughs, "Misery" is anything but a comedy; it's a horrifying, disturbing melodrama about love gone berserk. Helped by a good performance by James Caan and an outstanding, Oscar-winning one by Kathy Bates, and by William Goldman's intelligent adaptation of the novel (this is one of Goldman's best scripts), Reiner has created a movie that deserves to be compared with the greatest of all non-fantasy horror movies, Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." It was a major boxoffice success.
As with "Psycho," the tension increases steadily throughout, becoming at times nearly unbearable, exploding into violence so disturbing I doubt that anyone who can watch it without wanting to turn away from the screen at one point (involving a block of wood and a sledge hammer). (But the film is not graphically gory.) As with "Psycho," the story centers on a plausible psychopath, someone who has been murdering for years and getting away with it--but unlike poor, tortured Norman Bates, unaware of his killer side, this monster, nurse Annie Wiles (Kathy Bates, no relation to Norman), is not only quite aware of what she's doing, she's proud of her trail of undetected, secret slaughter, apparently beginning with her own father. She even keeps a scrapbook of her clippings. (Two side-by-side clippings: the top nurse at a nursing school dies mysteriously; on the other, the now top nurse, Annie, graduates with honors.) She's not just a monster; when we first meet Annie, as Paul regains consciousness, she seems angelic--kind, efficient, hospitable. But it isn't long before her terrifying temper emerges--and she still remains human, because she is actually aware of her nightmarish temper; what she doesn't realize is that even when she's not angry, she's psychotic.
Bates has already told you what she's really like with her eyes, her slouching manner, her mouth that shifts wildly from slack-jawed stupidity to grinning, sunny joy, to the snarl of a beast. She has a (rather charming) pet pig called Misery; after she introduces Paul to the pig, she grunts playfully at him, one of the ideas in the novel I swore couldn't work on screen, but it does, thanks to Bates' deep understanding of Annie, and her willingness to go as far as necessary to make this character real. Bates prior to "Misery;" since, she has occasionally been a movie's main star.. This was the arrival of a great actress on screen, a real artist--and those of you who have been reading my reviews will know I very, very rarely use that term. Her Annie is indeed a monster, but we can still vaguely sympathize with her, because her motivations are so transparent, her logic (from her point of view) so unassailable. She has the confidence of the cracked: everything she does is right, as she sees it. Her life had undergone some painful problems some years ago (a divorce, and being accused of murdering childen in her care); she was "saved" by reading those bodice-ripping romances about Misery. She adores Paul. She's set his broken legs and arm, she's acquired a wheelchair for him, she feeds him, cleans up after him, waits on him constantly. She'll do anything for him, anything at all.
Except let him leave. Or tell anyone he is there.
Local lawman Sheriff Buster (Richard Farnsworth) and his sarcastic wife/deputy (Frances Sternhagen) search through the snowy mountains for the missing novelist; his agent (Lauren Bacall) frets back in New York. Time passes, and Paul Sheldon's disappearance fades from the front page to the back pages of newspapers. Meanwhile, Paul, initially grateful to Annie, allows her to read his new, non-Misery novel. But she's turned off by the Naughty Words; she hates profanity, using instead terms like "oh my goodness," "cock-a-doodie" and "dirty birdie." When she reads his latest Misery novel--in which he kills off his heroine--Annie is absolutely enraged, and Paul knows for sure he's in deep trouble.
Sorrowfully, but with a great sense of duty--she's being guided, she
says, by God himself--Annie forces Paul to burn his precious non-Misery
novel (the only copy of the manuscript), then buys writing supplies for him, including a typewriter with no "N" key, and forces him to write another "Misery" novel to bring her back to life. Annie is certain the world will regard her as an artistic savior. It becomes a contest of wills--can Paul find a way out of his miserable condition?
At first thought, casting James Caan in the role of a man who's confined to bed or a wheelchair for 90% of the movie, seems counterproductive. In the featurettes and commentary tracks, Reiner and Goldman (they each have a track) admit that Caan wasn't their first choice. Even Reiner wasn't the first choice; Warren Beatty worked on the script with Goldman for a while, intending to play Sheldon and to direct. Among the other actors approached: William Hurt, Harrison Ford, Kevin Kline, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfuss. Caan seems to have pounced on it; he's often ruefully admitted that he himself turned down a lot of roles he should have accepted.
Caan is a kinetic, dynamic actor, best in motion--and yet it's because of this that his Paul Sheldon works. He seems more trapped than a less lively actor would. For this guy to be imprisoned is a real strain on him, on all of us. The actor had to play most of his scenes in a bed or wheelchair; the confinement irritated him, and it effectively shows in his performance.
Reiner met a real challenge with brilliance: most of the movie takes
place in one room, and deals almost exclusively with two characters. His
production designer Norman Garwood and cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld have created a setting and a visual scheme that prevents the film from being claustophobic, while we are always aware of Paul's claustrophobia. There's a big window on one side of the room, and almost every shot of Paul alone features the window. Outside the weather changes, from blizzard to bright sunny snowscapes, to rain; inside it's always the same--except during Annie's increasingly-frequent titanic rages.
Reiner uses everything necessary: a complicated montage sequence of Paul typing; the passage of time is shown in the weather outside, the lighting in the room and Paul's series of shirts; this is all shot and edited seamlessly. Reiner and Sonnenfeld (his last movie as a cinematographer) use intense, extreme closeups of pins, locks, keyholes, pills, typewriter keys. When Annie forces Paul to burn his beloved manuscript, the charred cinders float down around him like fragments of a broken dream, or like charcoal versions of the snowflakes outside. Reiner seems to have felt this movie might have been beyond him--but if so, he was wrong. "Misery" is his best film as director, with the only major rival being "When Harry Met Sally." ("This Is Spinal Tap" is a whole nother kettle of fish.)
Aware that a lot of the movie takes place in one room, Reiner intercuts from Annie's house to Buster's search for Paul, from interior scenes to handsome snowy exteriors, from closeups of Paul in bed to shots of questing helicopters overhead. He keeps us focused: scenes of Paul trying to get out of the room when Annie's away in town become almost excruciatingly suspenseful. When it rains, Annie becomes deeply depressed, playing Liberace records to get her through this. She tells Paul she knows he'll eventually have to leave; "You'll never know the fear of losing someone like you if you're someone like me." The movie is shrewdly balanced.
It's William Goldman's best after "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." (He later did two more King adaptations, "Hearts in Atlantis" and "Dreamcatcher," neither of which is anywhere nearly as good as "Misery"--but this was true of King's novels, too.) In their previous collaboration, "The Princess Bride," Reiner was hampered by Goldman's arch script, but now Goldman has been liberated by King's novel. The dialog is always realistic, never clever for its own sake; Paul's humor understandably tends toward the bitter (Annie puts him in the wheelchair, takes him to the door--"I always wanted to visit the other side of the room," he sighs), while Annie has no discernible sense of humor at all. The scenes with the sheriff are almost entirely the work of Goldman, but the byplay between Farnsworth and Sternhagen has the feel of Stephen King dialog, even though it isn. (Sternhagen's character is original to the film.)
In the novel, we gradually learn that Paul's beloved getting-away-from-Misery novel wasn't really very good, and that perhaps the Misery novels were better than he thought. They do have a legion of fans; it's just a nasty twist of fate that he falls into the hands of one of them, who's a murderous psychotic. But King's book is, of course, a novel, and can flesh out details of plot and characterization not available to the writer and director of the movie based on the novel.
Any description of "Misery" sounds oppressive, but despite the shocking violence ("hobble" takes on a whole new and terrifying meaning), despite the cramped setting, despite the terror that Annie arouses, the movie is still playful. Annie seems very real, and so does Paul, but you can walk out of the film giggling with relief, and find yourself recommending it to everyone in sight. "Misery" is, all things considered, fun.
It's been treated to a great transfer in this Blu-ray disc. The movie takes place primarily in Annie's house, mostly in that spare bedroom she's fixed up for Paul, so most of what we see was carefully designed and selected. Textures are important (as when Annie spills soup on Paul's blanket), details are crisp and clean, and, of course, color is excellent. The depiction of color is one of the greatest strengths of high definition, but this is too rarely pointed out.
There are two discs; one features the film in Blu-ray high definition, and has no extras; the other has the film in standard definition and is loaded with extras. The commentary track by Reiner is chatty and informative; he only rarely allows much time to pass without saying something. This is not true of Goldman's track; he hadn't seen the movie in years when he recorded the track (evidently in 2004), and allows it to play for long stretches without saying a word. Reiner gratefully acknowledges the input of Warren Beatty, who made the script "hole free." Both remark on the intricately edited montage sequences, and both are amused by Bates' reading of Annie's furious line, "He didn't get out of the cockadoodie car!"
There are several featurettes; "Misery Loves Company" is a well-made but standard making-of short, probably also from 2004; among those interviewed are Reiner, Goldman, Sonnenfeld, Caan, Bates and Sternhagen. All come off very well. "Marc Shaiman's Musical Mystery Tour" is a reasonably informative interview with the composer, but the other featurettes, "Diagnosing Annie Wilks," "Advice for the Stalked," "Profile of a Stalker," "Celebrity Stalkers" (that is, people who stalk celebrities, not celebrities who stalk people) and "The Anti-Stalking Law" are, unfortunately, dull and obvious, adding almost nothing to the film or to our knowledge about psychotic stalkers.
But overall, this is an excellent Blu-ray set, and is strongly recommended.
Video quality: Top-notch. It isn't a disc for showing off your system, but the movie is crisply rendered and a treat to watch.
Sound quality: Above average
Actors: James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Lauren Bacall, Frances Sternhagen
Director: Rob Reiner
Writer: William Goldman from the novel by Stephen King
Keywords: King, Reiner, Caan, suspense, horror
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