The Crucible
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Actor: Bruce Davison, Daniel Day-Lewis, Joan Allen, Paul Scofield, Winona RyderBrand: Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 124 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-06-01
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Color; DVD; Widescreen; NTSC
DVD Reviews of The Crucible
DVD Review: It's the performances that make it work
Summary: 3 Stars
This film, an historically inaccurate adaptation of a brilliant but historically inaccurate play by Arthur Miller that sought to find the emotional, rather than the historical center of the "crucible" that was Salem Village in 1692, is brought to life primarily through the vivid performances of Daniel Day-Lewis, Joan Allen, and in a rare excellent performance, Winona Ryder. I lost two of my Great-great-great, etc... Aunts in this bizarre episode of American History, one of whom, Rebecca Towne Nourse, is a main character in the play, while the second and third Towne women to be cried out against, Mary Towne Eastey and Sarah Towne Bridges-Cloyce, were not mentioned in Mr. Miller's play, but did actually play parts in the real events, which do not really resemble the play at all. In real life, the girls were quite young, 11 or younger, and as Abigail was only 11, there was no sexual relationship involved between her and anyone. Mr. Miller used sex to represent repression and so aged the girls and gave them back-stories that suited his purposes in order to find, as already stated, the emotional truth of the situation, rather than the literal truth. He was also writing during the House Un-american Activities trials, and used this piece of history to illustrate the perversion of justice that can occur when no one is watching and absolute power is handed over to corrupt people. In Salem Village (not Salem proper), the court was taken over by the church, "spectral" evidence was used against the orders of the Magistrate in charge of the jurisdiction (he was away in England for a while, and when he returned, 19 people had been hanged, and as more than 400 had been accused and imprisoned all over the place, three others had died of conditions; he shut down the trials immediately), and as those who were accused were stripped of their property which was then given to the accusers, it wasn't long before personal feuds became the reason behind most of the accusations. In this tiny village, a few hysterical girls led on by their hysterical parents and then fevered church leaders, were able to gain incredible power for a few months until afterwards, it was as though the whole thing had been a dream.
The film takes the action out of the stifling courtroom and tiny, small-windowed rooms of 18th century New England homes, and opens it up to the realities of trying to subsist on the hard Massachusetts soil in weather that the settlers had never seen in England. Misery, poverty, 4-6 hour-long sermons, constant vigilance by the church elders, and the exhaustion that came with the refusal to allow relief with song or dance or any other sort of joyous act--even the refusal to allow color in clothing--led to an oppression of spirit that was felt down to the youngest memebers of the village. Into that cauldron was added the exotic ingredient of the Carribean slave, Tituba, who did indeed take the young girls out to dance around the fire in the night, teaching them her own religion from Haiti (which we now call Voodun), and in this small piece of freedom a few girls found release. But when caught, Tituba's threats should the girls give her away were believed and in order to escape punishment, they did things such as suddenly faint away, cry out in gibberish, and do anything else they could think of to avoid being questioned by their parents, and as doctors could find nothing wrong with then, the Church elders were brought in and so began the search into "witchcraft," a notion the church fathers had brought with them from England and Europe and though the "burning times" had passed there, the concepts were revived and used to explain the fainting and rambling the little girls put on to avoid whipping. Only after they got more attention than they expected did things get out of hand, and only then were the powerful brought in to genuinely take over the town.
I found the film to be a good adaptation of a play that is very intense and filled with layers of meaning above and beyond the actual events of 1692. To see the hard and unforgiving land is helpful in understanding the psyches of those who fought it (for unlike the Iriquois who did not fight, but rather lived in harmony with, the environment and therefore had plenty of food and shelter and still, at that time, a relatively peaceful existence); to see even that one quality of disharmony with one's surroundings helps to understand how so much unease would fill the village. With the girls older and the one, Abigail, having had both a sexual and more open-minded relationship with a free-thinking man (Day-Lewis) who was already living in mild opposition with the rest of the villagers, more fuel is added to the smoldering fire. As we watch Ryder's passion turn to rage (in the scene where she tries to once again get her former lover to take her back, Ryder's performance is especially ferocious and affecting) we see the beginnings of what we know then will soon become a nightmare of personal vengeance that spreads from Abigail to all the villagers, each of whom has his or her own ax to grind. When one is starving and can get one's neighbor's swine simply by crying out that the neighbor has fixed one with a furious, devilish stare that has caused a fearful pain in the back and head, it becomes frighteningly easy to ward off hunger. In the film, we see the calculations of many of the villagers as well as the elders, and one is left with the question: what would I have done with hungry children, after a hard winter and another on its way?
As I wrote in the heading, it's the performances that drive the film more than the text; Joan Allen is especially heart-breaking as the quiet, sedate, repressed and rather simple Elizabeth Proctor who simply does not understand her husband's mind or his passions (intellectual as well as physical) and is unable to meet them so that they can have a happy marriage. Day-Lewis does a good job of conveying this intelligent and harried man's frustration with the narrowness of his life and his inability to tolerate the situation in which he finds himself. While having resigned himself to farming as best he can in the rocky soil, his thirst for intellectual stimulation is palpable, and while it's easy to write Abigail off as a mere sexual diversion, Ryder gives her enough substance that we do know she had also provided Proctor with the intellectual stimulation he so desperately craves, and that this is why his wife is so threatened by her--a mere bodily diversion would have been more easily borne than being faced daily with the knowledge that a girl of Abigail's intelligence as well as passionate nature would have made Proctor a better wife. This is probably the only film in which I found Winona Ryder to be a real force, and while it is the material that gives her this opportunity, she makes the most of it. When she threatens the other girls, she is frightening, and with Proctor, is able to go from seductive to vindictive in a heartbeat. It is easy to see why Elizabeth Proctor found her so much more powerful than herself, despite the fact that Abigail was in her house ostensibly as a servant.
The costumes and set design are accurate and beautiful in their stark simplicity, and the rugged coastline of New England is certainly seen in its most harsh and unforgiving beauty. The Arran Islands off the West Coast of Ireland look like this now, in the 21st century, and life is only marginally easier there now than it was here then. All in all, events came together in that challenging time and place to form the perfect crucible for horror, and I feel that the film does a pretty good job of capturing much of that. It cannot help but lack the locked-down intensity of a stage production, but it is a creditable effort for this medium.
It would have been nice if the filmmakers had bothered to get some dates correct; Rebecca and John did not die together, for instance, though they do in the film. John Proctor was hanged on 19th August, and Rebecca Towne Nourse on 19th July (she was 71 and the most respected woman in Salem Village; once she went, many lost hope). Her sister, Mary, was hanged on the 22nd September, after which the Towne men gave up on such concepts of justice and truth, and rescued the third Towne sister, Sarah, imprisoned in a shed; she was broken out of it by her brothers, and taken back to the family home in Topsfield, out of the jurisdiction of the Court. She later sued the Magistrates, and was awarded 3 gold sovreigns (a film, "Three Sovreigns for Sarah," was made about her, with Vanessa Redgrave in the title role). One sovreign for each sister...
I guess I've written more history than an actual review, but as more and more people are getting their "history" from films and television, it doesn't hurt to relate in some detail what actually went on in the events that inspired a play, and then film. Especially when one's own family was involved. All but two of William Towne and Joanna Blessing's 8 children had been born in England, and I rather doubt they expected to lose any of them in this manner when they came to Massachusetts Colony in the 1630's. It was a brief but terrible chapter of early American history, and has since served as a fascinating event for hundreds of psychologists and theologians, primarily because it was unique, unlike the generations-long, multiple-nation Inquisitions in Europe. It's impossible to ever fully understand "Why then?" "Why there?" We watch this film, the play, read books, the letters written by Mary Towne Eastey and others, and still we ask, "Why?"
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