Ethan Frome Reviews

Director John Madden's screen version of the classic Edith Wharton novel is faithful to the point of reverence. Featuring a strong performance by Liam Neeson in the title role, ETHAN FROME is a rigorous and classically constructed film, as no-frills and straightforward as its period New England setting. Newly arrived from Boston, the young and progressive Reverend Smith (Tate Donovan) makes friendly overtures toward the reclusive and resistant Frome. Frome remains chilly and distant, while Smith's congregation is taciturn and tight-lipped at their new pastor's admonishments to extend charity to the village outcast. Mrs. Hale (Katharine Houghton) finally relates to Smith the tragic story that led to Frome's eventual deformity and apparent isolation. Frome's youth, which held early promise of scholarship, a lucrative career and a life in balmy Florida, ended abruptly with the death of his mother and his subsequent and hasty marriage to her caretaker, Zeena (Joan Allen). Zeena quickly became a mean-spirited woman who relished the role of chronic invalid, compelling Frome to remain at home, pinching his pennies and abandoning his dreams. When the Fromes take in Zeena's impoverished young cousin, Mattie Silver (Patricia Arquette), a spark enters Frome's otherwise dreary and careworn existence. Through circumstances almost, but not quite, beyond their control, Frome and Mattie become lovers for one glorious day, momentarily liberating them from the painful necessities of circumstance. The affair ends in the tragic denouement of the tale, as Zeena, Mattie and Frome are doomed to a suicidal, death-in-life existence. The tone is set from the opening frame, depicting a bleak and bone-chilling winter landscape through which Frome, hunched and painfully crippled, makes agonizingly slow and solitary progress on foot. The unrelenting frigidity of the Vermont winter permeates the film from beginning to end, setting a tone as grim as the pinched, buttoned-up Christian townsfolk of the village Wharton calls Starkville. Performances, notably Neeson's, are infused with noble dignity enhanced greatly by cinematographer Bobby Bukowsi's artful filming of the winter landscape that dominates story and characters alike. If ETHAN FROME has a flaw, it would be that the film is a little too disciplined, perhaps too reminiscent of a movie recommended by a diligent English teacher. The story and its characters remain classics, however, and here are translated handsomely to the screen.