Anthony Hopkins! All right.

More below, etc.

So, Hearts in Atlantis. What to say, what to say.

First, the title is a bit odd, since the story this movie is based on isn’t “Hearts in Atlantis” but a different story from the volume named for that tale, in this case, “The Low Men in Yellow Coats”. My roommate likes it because it ties very indirectly perhaps into The Dark Tower cycle.

Hmm. This is an unusual movie, I have to say. It feels more like a book than any other film I’ve ever seen… something about the way it flows, stretches out in connected vignettes or something.

The movie opens with a middle-aged photographer, Robert Garfield, receiving a letter explaining that his old friend has died and containing a pitcher’s mitt. Garfield goes to the funeral where he learns that another old friend he had been eager to see there also perished some time before, and that starts a flashback to our main tale..

Inside the flashback, Hearts in Atlantis concerns a young Bobby who lives with his fashion-plate mother in 1950s America somewhere in the northeast; most likely Maine, but I forget. In his spare time he longs for a bike and hangs out with his best friends, Sully and Carol, who we’ve already learned eventually drift out of his life and, of course, die. Bobby’s own life is somewhat derailed from its previous course as a new boarder moves in to the apartment above his own, a mysterious old man named Ted Brautigan, apparently on the run from someone or something.

No points for guessing who Hopkins plays.

Bobby builds a friendship with Brautigan, who hires him to watch for pursuers in the neighborhood, under the guise of having the paper read to him each day. Brautigan seems harmless enough, though he does display odd flashes of knowledge he shouldn’t have, and occasionally goes into what one might call a trance or seizure, seeming to see things at distance.

As the summer goes on, Bobby and his friends deal with neighborhood bullies, a budding relationship with Carol, and his mother’s absenteeism and sporadic neglect. Brautigan helps them out with a few of these issues and some life lessons, and all goes fairly smoothly, until his pursuers show up.

I won’t go on from there, to avoid plot spoilers. I will admit to loving how the men chasing him are depicted and described here; shadowy figures that feel out pain and grief, who can only be kept off your trail if you clear your mind of darkness and focus on your happiest moments. A sort of psychic bloodhound that smells pain instead of blood. Fascinating.

Added bonus for King movie fans, the man who plays the adult Bobby, David Morse, was also Brutus the prison guard in The Green Mile.

Overall, Hearts in Atlantis is a fairly easy recommendation. It won’t change anyone’s life, but it’s pretty well put together, and works for an evening’s entertainment.

Not like next week’s Dreamcatcher at all. No sir.

Last Week: The Green Mile
Next Week: Dreamcatcher