Note:
Those of you who have read my column over the years might be aware that,
in all my years of reviewing television I have almost never reviewed a TV
movie. This is not because I haven’t been impressed by the work that cable or
streaming have done with TV movies; on
the contrary, I have long appreciated the storied history of HBO when it comes
to elevating the form. But for whatever reason, no doubt some quirk on my part,
I’ve never tried to review a film made expressly for television.
I am breaking this rule for this film for a
combination of factors. First it is likely to be a contender for Emmy
nominations, perhaps more than the mere token nomination for TV movie. Second, two
of the talents behind – one of the cast and one of the directors – have left us
in the last year so it seems fitting to pay tribute to both of them. Finally, I
have a personal connection with the source material that is different then the
average viewer would.
So with that in mind, here is my review of Showtime’s
production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.
During a career in film
making that spanned more than six decades, William Friedkin was one of the
greatest and most undervalued directors of our time. This might seem hard to fathom
to consider that two of the films he directed: The French Connection and
The Exorcist are considered two of the greatest movie ever made and Sorcerer
was considered by no less an authority than Quentin Tarantino as one of the
three films made that truly showcased what a great director was willing to do
to create art. (The other two were Werner Herzog’s Aguire, Wrath of God and
Apocalypse Now, considered two of the greatest movies ever made.)
But while Friedkin was
admired by his peers and so many critics he is often compared more with his
contemporary Peter Bogdanovich then the legends who came out of the 1970s such
as Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg. Because while all of those men more than
lived up to their potential after those three groundbreaking movies, Friedkin
never quite came close to echoing them. With the exception of the
still-controversial Cruising and the action classic To Live and Die
in L.A. much of Friedkin’s subsequent career was made of increasingly
disappointing and often disastrous critically received movies, bottoming out
with the horrible Jade in 1995.
For a man known most
famous for his action films, looking back on it some of the best work Friedkin
did in his career were actually adaptations of plays. This makes sense
considering he got his start in TV. He adapted the groundbreaking The Boys
in the Band in 1970, a remake of 12 Angry Men for cable starring
Jack Lemmon, Hume Cronyn and George C. Scott (the latter won an Emmy) and one
of the most terrifying plays I’ve ever seen, an adaptation of Tracy Letts’s Bug.
I remember renting the latter when I was twenty-seven, not knowing until
afterwards it was a play and being absolutely astonished by every aspect of the
incredible work of Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon as we spent nearly two hours
into a descent into madness. Both performers were so genuine in their
convictions it was until the final act that I realized how genuinely crazy
Shannon’s character was and how he had dragged Judd’s into it.
So perhaps it is fitting
that for what was his final work, Friedkin would return to a filmed adaptation
of a play. The play he chose has its origin in one of the most famous works in
the twentieth century but there is a good chance that the average viewer might
not have known that – but I did.
The average literary fan
is aware of The Caine Mutiny, the brilliant novel that launched Herman
Wouk into literary superstardom. The average cinema fan is very familiar with
the film adaptation of it that came three years later. It was considered a
classic from the start, was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best
Picture and Humphrey Bogart’s work as Captain Queeg is so deeply etched into
the lore of cinema that I actually remember the children’s show Square One
TV directly satirizing it , right down to the steel balls the character was
shaking in his palm. But both are so firmly etched into the lure that you might
not be aware that even before the film came out, Wouk adapted a play that
debuted onstage months before the film came out.
This is the part that’s
the personal connection. When I was in seventh grade I remember finding a book
of plays from the 1950s. I knew of many of them even at age eleven: Death of
a Salesman and Streetcar Named Desire and I was familiar with Marilyn
Monroe in The Seven-Year Itch. But I’m not sure I knew about the book or
film version of The Caine Mutiny before then.
The court-martial is
actually in Wouk’s book and it covers roughly a hundred and fifty pages of it. It
must have been a daring stroke of his to decide to tell only this part of his
best-selling novel and leave the viewer in the position of jurors ourselves. I
have a feeling this might have drawn Friedkin to adapting the play. In the 21st
century, the average viewer has forgotten both the novel and the film, so this
would be a completely new experience. And rather than adapt the film into a new
setting, Friedkin chooses to move the action of the Caine Mutiny into the
modern era.
The play, its worth
noting, was a success and ran on Broadway for more than a year. It was directed
by Charles Laughton and Henry Fonda played Barney Greenwald, Steve Maryk’s
defense attorney. The play has been revived several times since with Michael
Moriarty in the 1983 production and a London production that Charlton Heston
directed and starred in as Queeg. (That I would have loved to see.) It was last
revived on Broadway in 2006 with the brilliant character actor Zeljko Ivanek as
Queeg. It has also been adapted for television twice, the first time in 1955
live as part of the Ford Star Jubilee, the second in 1988 with Robert Altman at
the helm and Eric Bogosian as Greenwald.
All of these versions
kept it as a period piece. Friedkin moves his to the present by having the Caine
sweeping the Persian Gulf. We are in peacetime, unlike the original, but the
War on Terror hangs over everything. The original play has an all-white male
cast and Friedkin updated it for the 21st century to. The most
critical changes were turning the prosecutor Challee into a woman, played by Monica
Raymund and making the head of the tribunal Blakely African-American.
Friedkin couldn’t have
know that this would be one of the last roles that the incredible Lance Reddick
would ever play (any more than he could know this would be his last film) but
for Reddick there could be a more fitting role. Reddick has been at the center
of Peak TV from the start, playing John Basil an undercover cop who gets into
deep in OZ, going from there almost immediately to Cedric Daniels, the
no-nonsense lieutenant in The Wire, playing the mysterious Matthew
Abaddon in Lost, taking the role
of Philip Broyles in the incredible Fringe and finally being one of the
major recurring characters in the brilliant procedural Bosch. Reddick’s
entire career in television (and that includes his numerous guest spots well
before and after this) is that of authority figures who will take no crap from
anybody. This is particularly important for the role of Blakely.
Aside from those cosmetic
changes and a few lines updated the story involving the Internet, Friedkin
changes basically nothing of the source material. Stephen Maryk (played here by
Jake Lacy, looking more out of his depth than we usually see him) has been the
first person in two centuries charged with mutiny. During a storm he relieved
his commanding office Captain Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland) of command because he
believed Queeg was mentally unfit for command in a time of crisis. His defense
attorney is Barney Greenwald (played by Jason Clarke in this version) and its
clear that Greenwald has a very different defense in mind when after Queeg is
called by the prosecution, he reserves cross examination saying he intends to
call Queeg as a defense witness, something that stuns both Challee and Blakely.
The play is divided into
a two-act structure. In the first act, the prosecution puts on its case. If you
nothing about either the film or the book, it will seem to look very bad for Maryk
almost from the start. The man Maryk thinks will be his most loyal supporter
Lt. Keefer (Lewis Pullman) puts on an argument where it becomes clear he didn’t
support the decision. Most of the other prosecution witnesses argue, with the
exception of Keith (the central character in the novel) argue that while Queeg
was not a great captain, nobody thought he was crazy. Expert witnesses come on
to talk about Queeg’s sanity and that the captain has full authority. At one
point Blakely asks Maryk flat-out if he is satisfied with Greenwald as his
defense counsel and its very hard to argue otherwise.
In the second act
Greenwald puts on his defense. He calls just two witnesses. The first is the
accused, the second is Queeg. This is where the great drama of the play and the
film lie and I have no intention of spoiling it for the viewer so for now, I’ll
move to my own experience with the project.
Most of the members in the
cast either were well known to me at the time or would be later on (I wouldn’t
know anything about Pullman until I saw in Lessons in Chemistry later
that same year.) The acting is uniformly good though one does question the
presence of some of them (I couldn’t understand why Jay Duplass was here) and
while most of the attention going forward was on Reddick, I will focus mine on
the three leads.
Jake Lacy has over the
last few years justifiably gotten a reputation for playing comic blowhards,
both on The White Lotus and this years Apples Never Fall. If there’s a common thread that we see in
his work as Maryk, it’s that his character is clearly in over his hand and has made
a rash choice based on flawed intelligence. When he testifies in his defense,
he does everything in his power to make the argument all about Queeg and why he
thought he was a dangerous man. The listing of incidents he gives sounds
deranged (and if you never read the novel, it will sound even more so) and as
he states them he sounds sure of himself. When Challee crosses him, however,
she starts to grind down everything he’s held dear. She makes it clear how
poorly undereducated he is, how horrible his judgment was and just how many
blunders he made along on the way. Maryk sticks firm to his position throughout
with the dogged persistence of what seems to be right, but you can tell by the
time he leaves the witness stands, he’s beginning to wonder if he’ll come out
okay.
Jason Clarke is one of
the most undervalued character actors of the 21st century. I have
marveled at his talent since I first became award of him in the brilliant crime
drama Brotherhood and the cancelled far-too soon The Chicago Code. His
most recent role on television was the perennially angry Jerry West in the sadly
cancelled Winning Time (Clarke can’t catch a break with television). You’ve
seen him with his real Australian accent in Rabbit-Proof Fence and in
such brilliant dramas as Zero Dark Thirty, Mudbound and just recently as
the man who destroys Oppenheimer’s credibility. He’s also played Ted Kennedy,
Reinhard Heydrich and Potemkin.
Clarke has a gift for
playing military men and authority figures and you could see his work as
Greenwald as the polar opposite of what he did in Oppenheimer. As
Greenwald, he has to get his client off and the methods he does shock the jury.
The climax of the book is when he cross-examines Queeg with the same deliberate
pace that he dismantled Cillian Murphy. It is a slow and deliberate way of getting
his client off by, as Maryk will say when its over, “murdering Queeg.” But this
time when it happens Challee is so horrified by what she has witnessed that
rather than cross examine Queeg she demands that Greenwald be sanctioned and
disbarred. Blakely’s last statement before the board begins to make its judgment
is to tell Greenwald that while there will be no legal penalty that he has
crossed a line far beyond the scope of military proceedings. In the denouement
of the play, Greenwald is fully aware of what he’s done and is deeply ashamed
by his actions – though he hides them under the cover of drinking.
Kiefer Sutherland has
enormous shoes to fill when he steps into the role of Queeg and it is to his
credit that he doesn’t even once try to do a Bogart imitation. As in the play,
Queeg only appears at the start of the proceedings and the end, but his
presence overshadows so much of what happens that it seems like he’s always in
the room. Greenwald has essentially decided to try Queeg rather than defend
Maryk and its clear in every question he asks.
Again if you haven’t
read the book, I’m not going to describe the climactic scene, even though it is
one of the most famous in the history of film. What I will say is that I think
that Sutherland handles it better than perhaps Bogart did. Bogart was one of
the greatest screen presences of our time but so much of his career was spent
playing figures with authority that it was difficult to imagine him having the
nuance to the instability we see here. That probably played out better in the
film, but I can’t imagine it working if they had only filmed the play and the
only impression of Queeg’s madness is what we heard and Bogart’s reactions. (I
could be wrong, and perhaps a cinema buff will tell me so.)
Sutherland has always been more capable of nuance than
Bogart usually was allowed to show in his films and its particularly clear in the
second act when Greenwald confront him with the flaws in his personality and we
see his character begin to unravel. When
Queeg famously takes out the steel balls, the viewer realizes Greenwald’s play
and we know that the trap he’s sprung and it unfolds in one of the best bits of
acting in Sutherland’s career, one that if there is any justice he will be
nominated for an Emmy for.
What you think of the
denouement will be in the eyes of the beholder. I remember some reviewers
thinking it seemed tacked on, even though it was in the original play. I believe
it is necessary. I’m not normally in favor of exposition but in the case of a filmed
play, it’s the only way you can do things and considering that I suspect the
source material has been forgotten by the masses, they’re going to need in
order to understand why Greenwald feels the way he does about what he’s done
and how it gives a greater understanding as to the true interpretation of what
happened.
Its worth remembering
one last thing about The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. So many of the TV
movies we get these days are essentially focused more on action and putting the
movie part in TV movie. I’m not complaining about that part, some of the
greatest TV films I’ve ever seen have done so. But I feel a greater fondness
for those TV movies that choose to turn stage adaptions into movies without
losing the feel of the theater. I speaking not just of HBO’s versions of The
Sunset Limited or All The Way but last year’s incredible version of Reality.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial keeps with this grand tradition, and it is a
measure of Friedkin’s talent that he remember that for a version like this to
work, he had to narrow the focus of his camera and not spread it outward. That’s
a fitting tribute to one of the best directors of our time, to know that even
in his last project he’d not forgotten the tricks of the trade.
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