Stephen King's novella "Apt Pupil," part of the "Different Seasons" short stories, is probably one of his most ambitious recent efforts. It is the story of a young boy's growing fascination with an SS officer living in a typical suburban American town, but the movie version shies away from its basic premise and becomes a slightly baroque Gothic thriller.
The apt pupil is a blank-faced high school student named Todd Bowen (Brad Renfro), who is obsessed with the Nazis' tortures of the Jews during the Holocaust. After some Nancy Drew-type investigating, Todd discovers that a local resident named Arthur Denker is really a former SS officer named Kurt Dussander (Ian McKellen). One day, Todd visits the old man's house and, at first, the old man denies the kid's charges. Finally, Dussander succumbs, and is coerced by Todd into telling him the detailed atrocities he committed. If Dussander complies, the kid will not tell the authorities his true identity since he is on a wanted manhunt list. In one eerie scene, Dussander puts on his SS uniform and marches until the kid insists that he stop. The comfort of evil has struck again.
"Apt Pupil" begins promisingly, and I thought the film was going to show the grim reality of the war through the spoken words of a Nazi who was just following orders (this was one of the novella's high points). The film begins that way, but then the machinations of the plot take over. For example, we see Todd's fascination and obsession seeping into his life when his high-school grades deplete, he loses contact with his best friend ("Dawson's Creek's" Joshua Jackson), and he dreams of gas showers. Then there's the nerdy guidance counselor (a fine comic bit of casting by a mustached David Schwimmer), who tries to determine the root of Todd's school problems. Todd's basketball playing, ironically, is better than ever. These are all fine details that should be explored, but the problem lies in the casting of the lead character.
Brad Renfro ("The Client") exhibits a blank, emotionless, cold-eyed stare as Todd throughout the whole film, making him less than interesting or obsessive. I also didn't feel the tension building or developing between him and Dussander, considering how the film tries to show that a kid can be induced into evil. Mostly we get elements out of your typical Gothic horror/slasher movie: there's Dussander struggling to place a kitten in an oven; the unnecessary inclusion of a homeless man (Elias Koteas) who suspects that Dussander has homosexual tendencies; a bloody murder scene with Wagner's tragic excerpt from "Liebestod" suffusing the background; and Dussander's attempts to pass off as Todd's grandfather. All of these elements diminish whatever power the crucial central story had of a boy's fascination with evil.
The one redeeming factor is the superb performance by Ian McKellen as the weary, gentle, menacing Dussander, but the film shows him only as a one-dimensional monster. During the war, the SS officers were given orders and they had to uphold them, but they were still human beings performing atrocious acts of inhumanity. If the film tried to maintain a human, empathetic level with Dussander's role in the war - to see ourselves in the face of incomprehensible horrors - then it would have been a more cunning portrait of evil. As it stands, he's a monster, nothing more. Think of the similar role played by Armin Mueller-Stahl in "The Music Box" - he did it with shards of humanity and understanding.
Director Bryan Singer ("The Usual Suspects") and writer Brandon Boyce throw in too many complacent, cinematic flourishes instead of trying to deal with the nature of evil and how it breeds in small-town America, especially in adolescent boys. Singer would have been more apt at showing how evil cannot be easily pigeonholed or traced - now that would have been scarily profound.
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E-mail me with any questions, concerns or comments at jerry@movieluver.com or at Faust667@aol.com
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