THE CRUCIBLE
A film review by Deborah Kelley-Milburn
Copyright 1996 Deborah Kelley-Milburn
I should begin by stating my prejudices. "The Crucible" is one of my favorite plays. In my opinion Nicholas Hytner is a gifted director and Daniel Day-Lewis is the best actor alive. When I discovered that they were filming "The Crucible" practically in my back yard, I was thrilled, and I have followed its creation with great interest. Imagine my delight= =20 when I was lucky enough to get a ticket for a preview screening last Thursday. However, my excitement quickly turned to trepidation. I'd heard a lot of Oscar buzz and the production has stellar credentials. Were my expectations too high? Would they blow it? How could any film live up to such anticipation? Well, "The Crucible" lives up to the highest of expectations and then some. It is brilliant!
As you probably know from high-school English class, Arthur Miller wrote the play in the 1950s when it was interpreted as a thinly veiled allegory for McCarthyism. But the year is 1692. A group of teenage girls are caught dancing in the woods and to escape punishment they begin to cry witch. One of the girls, Abigail Williams (Winona Ryder), has another motive. She had a brief affair with the upstanding farmer John Proctor (Daniel Day-Lewis) and she wants to dispose of his wife Elizabeth (Joan Allen). Magistrates are brought in, lead by Judge Danforth (Paul Scofield) to ferret out the Devil and hangings begin. If accused, the only way to save oneself is by confession. Then the accusations reach the Proctors' door...
The screenplay, written by Arthur Miller is very close to the original. It retains the language and only adds a few scenes not in the play. Thus the essence of the play is intact. Great pains were taken to ensure the historical accuracy of everything in the film, right down to the actors' underwear, but this is no historical set piece - you should leave your high-school English expectations at the door. Hytner has added a pulsating, dynamic feeling to the film that carries the audience along with the principals as they struggle with the exploding hysteria. Hytner and Miller aim to transcend 1692, and the 1950s for that matter, and they succeed.
This film is so good in just about every way that it is hard to single out specific elements or performances. All the actors do a superb job, from Daniel Day-Lewis all the way down. I was worried that Winona Ryder might not have the range to handle the role of Abby, but she is excellent. She endows Abby with an appropriate complexity. She is strong, passionate, intelligent and - damaged. In another place and time she might have been a leader; in this piece she is quite believable as the ring leader of the hysterical girls. Then, all you have to do is take one look at Paul Scofield and you know that he was born to play Judge Danforth. He looks the perfect Puritan and he sounds it, delivering lines such as "And now we will touch the bottom of this swamp!" just right.
But the film belongs to Daniel Day-Lewis and Joan Allen. Day-Lewis is restrained for the first half of the film, conveying in subtle ways John Proctor's stature in the community. He projects strength and sexual magnetism along with the guilt for his sin. Joan Allen has few lines but makes the most of them as the wise but worried wife who loves her husband. At the outset, their marriage is in trouble, and by the end they have reconciled. Their scenes together are some of the film's finest, particularly one stunning scene shot on the beach where they ask each other for forgiveness. I had to restrain myself from sobbing; it is positively heartbreaking, one of the most moving love scenes I have ever seen. Together, they create an unforgettable portrait of a marriage.
Miller and Hytner have shrewdly made the Proctors' relationship the centerpiece of the film. In doing so, they skillfully blend the personal and the political. Like another Day-Lewis film "In the Name of the Father" where the father-son relationship grounds the movie, we care very much what happens to the Proctors. Thus Hytner and Miller escape the fate of some "political" dramas such as the recent "Michael Collins" that are all politics and history without enough emotion.
In fact, all of the characters are multidimensional; even the accusers are not painted with a singularly dark brush. We learn, for example, that Abigail Williams witnessed the brutal slaying of her parents. One of the women who first cries witch, Ann Putnam, is made sympathetic by the revelation that of her eight children all but one has died. When her last child is "afflicted" she is terrified and desperate for an explanation. Why have all her children been taken from her??? Her fear and rage fuel her accusations.
I've seen numerous articles which ask how "The Crucible" is relevant today, focusing on modern day "witch hunts" such as the lurid child sexual abuse cases. While there is one scene in the film where the girls get down on their hands and knees and call for Jesus, evoking contemporary evangelical Christianity, I think to focus on specific parallels misses the point. I don't believe Arthur Miller was writing specifically about anti-communism any more than he was writing specifically about witchcraft. Rather, "The Crucible" is a chiaroscuro of human nature. It's about fear, pain and the need for scapegoats. It's about corruption and the abuse of power. And ultimately it's about morality, justice, righteousness and the power of truth.
Miller and Hytner have created a timeless modern masterpiece in "The Crucible." It is not to be missed.
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