HBO's John Adams: founding father, occasional jackass
I've been really enjoying HBO's mini-series event, John Adams.
Which sort of surprises me.
I'm not much for period pieces. I find that most films that take place during dramatic, world-changing events in human history are so scrubbed down and overblown that there's no way you could be fooled into thinking it might have happened even sort of this way.
But the John Adams mini-series...it's like seeing Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven after a steady diet of John Ford or Howard Hawkes westerns. There's something about seeing our founding fathers sweaty, smelly, dirty, petty and egotistical that seems so much more authentic.
At one point in the second installment a group of representatives sits around a table patting themselves on the back over the first continental congress -- which has to this point accomplished nothing. Adams -- whose directness we admire even if it does sometimes make him an insufferable prick -- says that all they've proved is that every man there thinks he's a great man and has to go out of his way letting everyone else know it.
Which is the kind of thing you never read in your grammar school history class.
Any of you enjoying it as much as I am?
Comments (2)
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Good stuff. Really brings that era alive, warts and all. Interesting how important a role Abigail Adams played in shaping who he was, particularly with the ego stuff. She was the one, remember, who told him he needed to tone down all the talk of philosophers and great thinkers regarding his closing arguments in the trial of the British soldiers he was defending - that's it's all empty rhetoric and only serves to make you sound big and important. Basically what he tells the other dudes in Philly. That shut up already, we know you're smart. Let's get something done. Remarkable influence for a woman in that era considering how little rights or respect they had in society at the time compared to men. That ironically someone as egotistical as Adams actually listened more to his wife and respected her more than probably most other husbands at the time did.
Posted on March 24, 2008 1:42 PM
Yeah -- I also like the way in which, when he's separated from her (in France, where he wrestles with the culture and Ben Franklin's celebrity) he makes some really awful decisions and ends up making a huge ass of himself.
There is definitely a running theme throughout -- when Abigail is there to center him, he succeeds. When separated from her, he falters.
I think Laura Linney is very well cast, as well.
Posted on March 24, 2008 3:28 PM