![]() ![]() In the end he may have hewed too closely to the source material in structural terms. Giving Anderson's stories a free-handed African-American spin, Nearing acknowledges he was after a hybrid, a personal and poetic response to a book he loved. The gospel score, fine and vital, is by Chicago Heights minister Raymond Dunlap. The director and coadapter, Daniel Nearing, and the producer-cinematographer, Sanghoon Lee, relocate Anderson's lost and lonely characters to a Chicago Heights boarding house and environs, where layfolk and churchfolk alike struggle with their demons. Sherwood Anderson's 1919 short-story collage "Winesburg, Ohio" provides the blueprint for this visually arresting feature, shot on high-def digital black and white, with a few choice bursts of color. It is a beautiful book, and has inspired this beautiful film. It inspired a made-for-TV film and a Broadway musical, and influenced such as Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Salinger. Nearing is not the first artist to be drawn to Winesburg. They won't take long, and once you understand their workings the whole film will come into focus. ![]() Perhaps you could read just a few of the stories to begin with. When I say it helps to have read the book, I don't mean to frighten you. Much of it was shot on location, and Nearing succeeds in establishing it as a place like Winesburg where the countryside is always in walking distance, and one can go there with one's grotesqueries and feel at peace. Chicago Heights is seen as a not particularly lovely place drowsing near the prairie with the skyline of modern Chicago in the distance. Dialogue slips in and out too, as it does in the book, but we're not intended to think it's being said now. The film is mostly in contrasty black and white, sometimes slipping into color. Remarkably for a film of average length, Nearing touches on almost every one of Anderson's characters, and because of his meditative stylistic approach the film never feels rushed or choppy. What Nearing does, and it is rather brilliant, is show us Nathan in old age, under a blanket on his bed, remembering, dreaming or hallucinating about the people he has known. They are judged by the uncaring, and will be buried never understood. This attribute is why their inner thoughts and dreams never become known. All of the characters have some special reason they don't fit in. Wing Biddlebaum, for example, has hands so expressive they flutter like birds, and these beautiful hands are the cause of his isolation and hatred by the community. Anderson explains his theory of Grotesques, by which he means not sideshow freaks but people who have one aspect of their body or personality exaggerated out of proportion to the whole. It's helpful, maybe essential, to be familiar with the book before seeing the movie. Nearing's characters are all African-American. His central character is Nathan Walker (Andre Truss), also played as Old Nathan by William Gray, and at that age named in the credits as Sherwood Anderson. His time is the present and recent decades. Nearing's Chicago Heights is a distant Southern suburb of Chicago, bordering on farmland. ![]() His time frame spans the century's first quarter-century. Nearing finds an approach that in 90 minutes accomplishes the uncanny feat of distilling the book's essence.Īnderson's Winesburg is a town with roads that can be walked along a short distance into the country. The book is a collection of 22 short stories connected by the character George Willard, who comes of age there and reflects on the citizens he has grown to know. Daniel Nearing demonstrates in "Chicago Heights" that's not necessarily true. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, is sometimes named as a great work of fiction that cannot be filmed. Named to Roger Ebert's List of the Best Art Films of 2010Ī beautiful book inspires a beautiful film ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |