Who doesn't have MISERY on their winter weather watchlist? It's a great cold weather, snowed in movie with geography and climate taking center stage. MISERY shows what can be the greatest force of human isolation, when the weather and your location can keep you so physically and mentally far away from others. Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) has a whole host of other problems besides her treacherous drive and remote existence, nonetheless, the feeling of being far away and cold is presented well in the film and the snow becomes a character in itself revealing how claustrophobic it can be to live in an area so plagued by the heaviness of snow where there's only one poorly maintained road the leads to town. I recently moved to upstate New York and have been warned countless times by locals how bad the weather gets in the winter and that everything shuts down. I've seen a bit of this already, the stores here have winter hours and the library in the first town we moved to closed completely between November and March. What has always been my favorite season is primed to start bringing me those winter blues that I never really gave much credit to being a thing.
Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is quite inwardly isolated himself. He's been riding the gravy train for years now writing romance novels featuring a woman named Misery that he never wanted to in the first place and has now been stuck in an endless loop of creativity sucking drivel. He can't be the writer he wants to be anymore being so bound to churning out more of this particular publication. He's stifled and needs to free himself so he decides to, against the urging of his literary agent played by a timelessly graceful yet powerful Lauren Bacall (can't you just imagine her being the only woman that could be married to Humphrey Bogart, I know he was married before but Bacall just seems so particularly equipped to be his wife), kill off the main character in the series that has imprisoned his time and creativity. Little does he know upon making that decision that he will become imprisoned by Misery's biggest fan.
After his ceremonial cigarette and glass of champaign enjoyed after finishing the writing of his newest and non-Misery related book, Paul Sheldon sets out in his old Mustang leaving his self-induced seclusion reserved for the times he is working on something new. Visibly refreshed and ready to re-enter his preferred sector of the literary world, Paul's plans are waylaid as he skids off the road crashing his car and passing out in the process. When he comes to, he learns he had been pulled out of his car and brought to refuge by Annie Wilkes who, luckily for Paul, is a nurse with a whole stash of medicine and tools in her home to nurse him back to health. Annie tells Paul that they're practically snowed in and the phones are down but as soon as the roads clear up and service returns she will get him to a proper hospital. She reveals to him early on that she is the biggest fan of his work and feels honored to care for him. Being such a fan, she knows that he can only be in the area because he has written something new and asks to read his work. She encounters a fair amount of four letter words and in a fit of rage, reveals for the first time that something is not quite right with Annie.
Paul's crash unfortunately coincides with the release of his most recent, and final, Misery book wherein the titular character is killed off. Annie rushes to a nearby book store to buy all the copies of what is sure to be her favorite installment in Paul Sheldon's oeuvre when she is betrayed to find out that Misery dies in childbirth. She takes Misery's death as a personal affront and she cannot believe that Paul would do that to her after giving her someone that pulled her out of a personally dark place. This meditation on art and its relation to an individual is a powerful one. Many of us have a connection to a film, or a book, or some other piece of art because it is so entrenched in the time in which we experienced it. For someone like Annie, who has often felt alone and like she doesn't fit into the world, having Misery as a companion was the life raft she needed to make it through her divorce. Being this person who was already so isolated, she developed a deep attachment to this character and decided that Paul couldn't kill her off. Instead, he must stay in her care and complete an un-doing of the novel bringing Misery back to life.
It was already quite clear to the audience perspective, and eventually to Paul, that he had been kidnapped and Annie had no intention of taking him to a hospital, or anywhere else for that matter, by the time he was forced bu her to bring back Misery but the famous "hobbling" scene in which we see just how intent Annie is on deciding Misery's fate. Despite it being the best known scene of the film and one that stands out among all films as one that everyone knows, it would be a chore to actually see it happen and not to grimace. Despite its long history of being parodied, the setup is so intricately done that the payoff really is a payoff rather than a "oh THAT part is happening now" laugh a la many such famous movie scenes. After this, and despite his physical limitations, Paul sets out to free himself from the chains of Misery in a much more literal way than he had ever anticipated.
James Can really doesn't get due credit as an actor. Yeah, he's Sonny and that is great but I'm consistently impressed by everything I see him in at every stage of life. It's a real cinematic injustice that he is slumming around doing Hallmark movies and UNDERCOVER GRANDPA. I can't think of a replacement for Caan that still keeps MISERY as good as it is. He lands Paul's self-assured indifference as a general character trait coupled with the restlessness of an artist that's coasting below their capabilities ready to perform at capacity once again. Most of his acting is done in a bed and the limited range of motion is not at all a hindrance to his performance. His plan to act along with Annie and write another Misery book bringing her back from the dead is note perfect. Once the initial frustration wanes and he accepts his fate that the only thing that can save him is to write the book Annie is asking for, he completes the task with the fervor, not of someone that is fighting for their life, but of someone that could do this level of writing in their sleep. Caan constantly creates a more interesting character than simply someone imprisoned by a psychotic fan of their work.
At one point he long balls a plan to escape by attempting to poison, or at least knock Annie out, by saving the powder within the capsules of medicine that she gives him everyday. He decides to execute the plan by telling Annie he wants to have dinner with her and celebrate Misery's return. Annie is so thrilled to share the time with Paul and shyly clumsily has dinner with him. Paul sees his chance and entices Annie to share a glass of wine with him, she blushes immediately goes to retrieve the wine and after another ruse to get her away from the table, Paul dumps the contents of his homemade envelope into her drink. A quiet look of success subtly fills his demeanor when Annie suddenly spills the drink and foils Paul's plan. He is shattered, but Caan is so good at this understated acting that he's perfected over the years, Paul simply makes a joke and moves on internally gnawed at the wasted days spent depending on his plan while contemplating what to do next. The tension is palpable yet not predictable. By this point the audience doesn't know what to expect, will Annie have another tantrum about swearing or Paul's lack of appreciation, will some other incident arise, or will the night go exactly as planned. It's a great setup, well-directed by Rob Reiner and perfectly executed by Kathy Bates and James Caan.
I love James Caan and think he's been consistently undervalued and inadequately utilized throughout his career so I had to sing his praises above for a role I don't think anyone could have brought as much to while hitting the perfect balance the character requires, but this film is clearly Kathy Bates'. She won her only Oscar (so far) and deservingly so for her turn as Annie Wilkes. She takes a character mistreated by the film and makes it much more than the caricature that was written for her. She brings a realness and a sense of humanity to the "crazy woman" the script gives us. The audience can, if even briefly, commiserate with Annie thanks to Bates' performance. Beneath the "witness stand in Denver" and the scrapbook full of her connections to the many people killed under her care at the hospital at which she used to work, there is a real person, someone who lost their love and took on an existence of isolation to avoid getting hurt again. The sympathy is fleeting, of course, as clearly no one would recommend dealing with loneliness by kidnapping someone and ultimately deciding to kill them because she decides that's what destiny had in store for them, but the fact that you can sympathize at all speaks to the strength of the performance given by Kathy Bates.
I'm not sure how Rob Reiner does it--this ability he has to remain almost invisible yet one can tell that the film is directed by him. His trademark injection of humanity and heart into all of his films creates a noteworthy outing. I didn't remember MISERY looking like such a made-for-tv-movie but it certainly has that feel. The stakes of the film are raised once one learns that the source material, the Stephen King novel, acts as an allegory for the author's drug addiction, but even without that understanding the film is still a gripping exploration of isolation, even the self-inflicted kind, and its impact on our sense of self and ability to act in concert with others.
Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is quite inwardly isolated himself. He's been riding the gravy train for years now writing romance novels featuring a woman named Misery that he never wanted to in the first place and has now been stuck in an endless loop of creativity sucking drivel. He can't be the writer he wants to be anymore being so bound to churning out more of this particular publication. He's stifled and needs to free himself so he decides to, against the urging of his literary agent played by a timelessly graceful yet powerful Lauren Bacall (can't you just imagine her being the only woman that could be married to Humphrey Bogart, I know he was married before but Bacall just seems so particularly equipped to be his wife), kill off the main character in the series that has imprisoned his time and creativity. Little does he know upon making that decision that he will become imprisoned by Misery's biggest fan.
After his ceremonial cigarette and glass of champaign enjoyed after finishing the writing of his newest and non-Misery related book, Paul Sheldon sets out in his old Mustang leaving his self-induced seclusion reserved for the times he is working on something new. Visibly refreshed and ready to re-enter his preferred sector of the literary world, Paul's plans are waylaid as he skids off the road crashing his car and passing out in the process. When he comes to, he learns he had been pulled out of his car and brought to refuge by Annie Wilkes who, luckily for Paul, is a nurse with a whole stash of medicine and tools in her home to nurse him back to health. Annie tells Paul that they're practically snowed in and the phones are down but as soon as the roads clear up and service returns she will get him to a proper hospital. She reveals to him early on that she is the biggest fan of his work and feels honored to care for him. Being such a fan, she knows that he can only be in the area because he has written something new and asks to read his work. She encounters a fair amount of four letter words and in a fit of rage, reveals for the first time that something is not quite right with Annie.
Paul's crash unfortunately coincides with the release of his most recent, and final, Misery book wherein the titular character is killed off. Annie rushes to a nearby book store to buy all the copies of what is sure to be her favorite installment in Paul Sheldon's oeuvre when she is betrayed to find out that Misery dies in childbirth. She takes Misery's death as a personal affront and she cannot believe that Paul would do that to her after giving her someone that pulled her out of a personally dark place. This meditation on art and its relation to an individual is a powerful one. Many of us have a connection to a film, or a book, or some other piece of art because it is so entrenched in the time in which we experienced it. For someone like Annie, who has often felt alone and like she doesn't fit into the world, having Misery as a companion was the life raft she needed to make it through her divorce. Being this person who was already so isolated, she developed a deep attachment to this character and decided that Paul couldn't kill her off. Instead, he must stay in her care and complete an un-doing of the novel bringing Misery back to life.
It was already quite clear to the audience perspective, and eventually to Paul, that he had been kidnapped and Annie had no intention of taking him to a hospital, or anywhere else for that matter, by the time he was forced bu her to bring back Misery but the famous "hobbling" scene in which we see just how intent Annie is on deciding Misery's fate. Despite it being the best known scene of the film and one that stands out among all films as one that everyone knows, it would be a chore to actually see it happen and not to grimace. Despite its long history of being parodied, the setup is so intricately done that the payoff really is a payoff rather than a "oh THAT part is happening now" laugh a la many such famous movie scenes. After this, and despite his physical limitations, Paul sets out to free himself from the chains of Misery in a much more literal way than he had ever anticipated.
James Can really doesn't get due credit as an actor. Yeah, he's Sonny and that is great but I'm consistently impressed by everything I see him in at every stage of life. It's a real cinematic injustice that he is slumming around doing Hallmark movies and UNDERCOVER GRANDPA. I can't think of a replacement for Caan that still keeps MISERY as good as it is. He lands Paul's self-assured indifference as a general character trait coupled with the restlessness of an artist that's coasting below their capabilities ready to perform at capacity once again. Most of his acting is done in a bed and the limited range of motion is not at all a hindrance to his performance. His plan to act along with Annie and write another Misery book bringing her back from the dead is note perfect. Once the initial frustration wanes and he accepts his fate that the only thing that can save him is to write the book Annie is asking for, he completes the task with the fervor, not of someone that is fighting for their life, but of someone that could do this level of writing in their sleep. Caan constantly creates a more interesting character than simply someone imprisoned by a psychotic fan of their work.
At one point he long balls a plan to escape by attempting to poison, or at least knock Annie out, by saving the powder within the capsules of medicine that she gives him everyday. He decides to execute the plan by telling Annie he wants to have dinner with her and celebrate Misery's return. Annie is so thrilled to share the time with Paul and shyly clumsily has dinner with him. Paul sees his chance and entices Annie to share a glass of wine with him, she blushes immediately goes to retrieve the wine and after another ruse to get her away from the table, Paul dumps the contents of his homemade envelope into her drink. A quiet look of success subtly fills his demeanor when Annie suddenly spills the drink and foils Paul's plan. He is shattered, but Caan is so good at this understated acting that he's perfected over the years, Paul simply makes a joke and moves on internally gnawed at the wasted days spent depending on his plan while contemplating what to do next. The tension is palpable yet not predictable. By this point the audience doesn't know what to expect, will Annie have another tantrum about swearing or Paul's lack of appreciation, will some other incident arise, or will the night go exactly as planned. It's a great setup, well-directed by Rob Reiner and perfectly executed by Kathy Bates and James Caan.
I love James Caan and think he's been consistently undervalued and inadequately utilized throughout his career so I had to sing his praises above for a role I don't think anyone could have brought as much to while hitting the perfect balance the character requires, but this film is clearly Kathy Bates'. She won her only Oscar (so far) and deservingly so for her turn as Annie Wilkes. She takes a character mistreated by the film and makes it much more than the caricature that was written for her. She brings a realness and a sense of humanity to the "crazy woman" the script gives us. The audience can, if even briefly, commiserate with Annie thanks to Bates' performance. Beneath the "witness stand in Denver" and the scrapbook full of her connections to the many people killed under her care at the hospital at which she used to work, there is a real person, someone who lost their love and took on an existence of isolation to avoid getting hurt again. The sympathy is fleeting, of course, as clearly no one would recommend dealing with loneliness by kidnapping someone and ultimately deciding to kill them because she decides that's what destiny had in store for them, but the fact that you can sympathize at all speaks to the strength of the performance given by Kathy Bates.
I'm not sure how Rob Reiner does it--this ability he has to remain almost invisible yet one can tell that the film is directed by him. His trademark injection of humanity and heart into all of his films creates a noteworthy outing. I didn't remember MISERY looking like such a made-for-tv-movie but it certainly has that feel. The stakes of the film are raised once one learns that the source material, the Stephen King novel, acts as an allegory for the author's drug addiction, but even without that understanding the film is still a gripping exploration of isolation, even the self-inflicted kind, and its impact on our sense of self and ability to act in concert with others.