APT PUPIL (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Director: Bryan Singer Writer: Brandon Boyce (based on the novella by Stephen King) Starring: Ian McKellen, Brad Renfro, Bruce Davison, Ann Dowd, Joshua Johnson, Elias Kosteas, David Schwimmer, Joe Morton, Jan Tríska, Michael Byrne, Heather McComb, James Karen
There must be something about Stephen King's collection of novellas entitled "Different Seasons." From this collection, we've gotten "Stand by Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption" (based on "The Body" and "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," respectively), two of the best King adaptations that have been filmed (which, if you can remember all the King adaptations, isn't really saying a lot). This collection doesn't dabble in the usual King cliches, like supernatural monsters, but rather stems from real human horror. "The Body" is a poignant and totally original coming-of-age story, and "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" tells an outrageous story about a 19-year-long escape from prison that deals more with the characters who have eerily adapted to life there and can't function anywhere else. Who thought King was so philosophically interested in humanity?
"Apt Pupil" is sandwiched between both of these in the book, and deals with a fascinating topic. In it, a 16-year old genius high school student named Todd Bowden blackmails a man he believes to be a Nazi War Criminal in hiding into not giving him money but rather teaching him about what it was like in the concentration camps. I haven't read it (yet), but the key to this film is Todd is already rather evil himself, having taken the time to make sure the man is who he is, and then forcing him to unearth his old wounds, and that by hearing about the man's evil deeds from his past, he begins to get a better hold on his own personal evil.
That's all well and good, but that doesn't mean this film is necessarily very good. Just because a film has a neat philosophy doesn't mean that that cancels out all the problems with it, such as this film's main problem, a weak script. The film opens rather well, though, showing Todd (played by Brad Renfro, the kid from "The Client," that painfully mediocre Grisham film adaptation) as not totally at odds with his own inner evil. He's a senior, despite his age, and is rather shy though slightly popular (he has to be: his best friend is played by Joshua Jackson from "Dawson's Creek," and he actually looks like James Van Der Beek's younger brother). He's studying the Holocaust in his History class, which piques his interest so much that he studies it after school.
One day he sees a man on a bus that looks like an older version of one of the pictures of a concentration camp torturer, and becomes obsessed with him. When we next see him, he's accumulated all the facts into one folder, and has successfully blackmailed the man, one Arthur Denker, who's really a man named Kurt Dussander. He agrees to tell him all the stories (which we never hear with one exception - and that exception is about as creepy as the film gets), but soon the plot twists as Todd grows more and more in control of his evil, and Kurt digresses into his old state.
Well, that's how it should be. The Dussander regression is rather good for a bit, mostly because the performance comes from none other than Brit actor Ian McKellen, a brilliant thespian who's performance in 1995's "Richard III" ranks among one of the best of the decade (and one of the best villains of all time). He represents all that's great with the film, slowly allowing his old self to seep in, but at the same time coming across so mysteriously that he may have been that way all the time. When he tells his stories, we sense that he really did enjoy it and took a sick pride in his work.
But as good as McKellen is, the film suffers from being too much like a sustained ascent to whatever in the first half, then an anticlimactic anti-delivery in the second half. The meetings go on for awhile, without much insight, and Renfro, who's very good, is left with a characterization which is too erratic for him to really get a good grip on his performance, and therefore the first half allows us to be a tad disappointed in what this film is really trying to tell us. Is he really getting a good grip on his own evil, even though he was able to blackmail a man brilliantly when others couldn't? Renfro goes all out in his performance, making him a real bastard, and we wonder if we should like him or the crotchety old man being blackmailed...and then other times it's the other way around.
More conflicts are risen, like ones involving his presence at school, and more importantly, his slipping grades, which are allegedly the result of him having nightmares as a result of hearing those darned stories (we can't really get into this because we don't hear the stories either, but that would require, I guess, someone sitting down with an actual Nazi War Criminal, which just isn't worth it if it's just going to be in a silly little film). Enter Guidance Counselor Edward French, played by a moustached and surprisingly effective David Schwimmer (looking like a dorkier Groucho Marx in a short-sleeved shirt), who begins to try and help him, and only gets himself more involved in the plot.
The second half, which should bring about the breaking point, instead brings some really cheap moments of suspense tossed in for suspense-sake, such as the murders of a wounded pigeon, a cat (this isn't really resolved though, for whatever reason), and finally, a bum looking for a drink, somewhere to sleep, and a couple bucks, and is willing to do anything to get it (played by a very effective Elias Kosteas). All of these reduce the film to literal terms, rather than really exploring the horror within, not to mention that they're there for audience appreciation rather than anything deeper. By the time the film is quoting and misinterpreting John Donne, the film has become one of those films that takes the easy way out after a perhaps promising beginning, making the wait rather unworth it.
Still, there are good parts. The acting is very good, especially from McKellen and Renfro, who succeed despite some characterization problems they had nothing to do with. The direction and all things technical are the real plus side. Directed by Bryan Singer, who directed the contemporary classic, "The Usual Suspects," the film just looks good. His shots are well-developed, and his inclusion of a controversial high school shower scene, which morphs between reality and Todd's images of holocaust victims, is shallow but emotionally effective (just what is this supposed to be telling us about his character?). The cinematography is excellent, and the juxtaposing finale is particularly creepy.
Therefore, "Apt Pupil" is a modest failure. It's moments are really effective, but they fit like pieces from different jigsaw puzzles, making up a portrait that doesn't quite work. Still, it has some really nice throaway moments that make it great, particularly the revelation that all old German WWII survivors love American cartoons and comedy (the sight of McKellen loosing it while watching Mr. Magoo is especially amusing), which makes it just enough to be marginally likable, but just not totally effective as a disturbing piece of insightful cinema...or as part of the "Different Seasons" collection.
MY RATING (out of 4): **1/2
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