Hearts in Atlantis (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Hearts in Atlantis | |
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| Directed by | Scott Hicks |
| Produced by | Kerry Heysen |
| Written by | Stephen King(Book) William Goldman(Screenplay) |
| Starring | Anthony Hopkins Anton Yelchin Hope Davis David Morse |
| Music by | Mychael Danna |
| Cinematography | Piotr Sobocinski |
| Editing by | Pip Karmel |
| Distributed by | Castle Rock Entertainment Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 15 February 2002 |
| Running time | 101 mins |
| Country | United States of America |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Hearts in Atlantis is a 2001 film directed by Scott Hicks. It is loosely adapted from Stephen King's novella "Low Men in Yellow Coats", from his story collection Hearts in Atlantis.
- Tagline: What if one of life's great mysteries moved in upstairs?
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[edit] Plot
Hearts in Atlantis revolves around Robert "Bobby" Garfield, a middle-aged man recollecting his past, in particular the summer when he was eleven years old. During that summer he and his two friends Carol Gerber and John "Sully" Sullivan experienced many things together, the most mysterious of which was meeting an elderly drifter named Ted Brautigan.
Bobby lives with his single mother, the self-centered Liz Garfield, who takes in Brautigan as a boarder. Ted takes the lonely Bobby under his wing, while his mother is busy with her job and entertains her boss as a way of paying off debt supposedly left by Bobby's late father. The two form a father-son bond, and it slowly becomes clear that Ted has some psychic and telekinetic powers that rub off on the young boy. These same powers are the reason that Brautigan has come to this sleepy town; he has escaped the grasp of the "Low Men", strange people who wouldn't stop at anything to get their hands back on Ted.
Bobby, Carol and John have frequent conflicts with the local town bully, whom Ted is able to scare away by looking into his mind and finding out that his violence is used to cover up the fact that he is secretly gay and a cross-dresser. However, at one point the bully hurts Carol, and when Ted manipulates her dislocated shoulder into place, Bobby's mother arrives and mistakenly believes that Ted is a child molester. She is confronted by Ted's ability to tell her the truth about what she is doing with her boss and how it is affecting her relationship with her son, providing another reason that Ted must leave. That and the government is closing in on him.
Ted is eventually captured by the authorities with the help of a tip from Bobby's selfish mother. As some form of closure Ted yells to Bobby as he is being driven away that he wouldn't have missed a moment. And later Bobby mirrors the same feelings.
[edit] Cast
- Anthony Hopkins – Ted Brautigan
- Anton Yelchin – Robert 'Bobby' Garfield
- Hope Davis – Elizabeth 'Liz' Garfield
- Mika Boorem – Carol Gerber
- David Morse – Adult Bobby Garfield
- Timothy Reifsnyder – Harry Doolin
[edit] Reaction
The movie was a box-office failure, grossing $23.6 million. VHS and DVD sales totaled approximately $10 million, allowing the film to narrowly break even. Anton Yelchin did receive positive recognition and won a Young Artist Award for his performance.
[edit] Differences from the source material
The story that it was based on had deep ties into King's epic The Dark Tower. In the original novella, the 'low men' were in fact Can-toi, agents of the Crimson King. Ted Brautigan was a 'breaker', a psychic whose abilities made him able to (unwillingly, of course) to 'break' down the beams surrounding the Dark Tower, the linchpin of all existence. Although he is taken away at the end, like the film, it is later implied that he escapes as Bobby later receives rose petals in the mail. (The Dark Tower is in the middle of a large field of roses).
Carol does not die in the story as well. She is believed to have perished in a fire, but in the end, she meets up with Bobby but under a different name.
