Terra Extraneus

Arrogant, contentious, vain, verbose, bookish, boorish, strident, cantankerous. Sound like anyone you know?

Those are a few of the less complimentary descriptions that have been made about founding father and second president, John Adams. Biographer David McCullough described Adams as “high-spirited and affectionate, vain, cranky, impetuous, self-absorbed and fiercely stubborn.”

Eclipsed by the revered Gen. George Washington, Adams was the distant runner-up to be our nation’s first president. As President No. 2, Adams failed to win re-election, defeated by his own vice president, the much more charismatic Thomas Jefferson. Now modern Americans have an opportunity to get acquainted with our most cantankerous founding father in the HBO mini-series, “John Adams,” which was released on DVD on June 10 (see my first post on the mini-series here).

However, John Adams as portrayed by actor Paul Giamatti is never as volatile or inflammatory or irritating as the real Adams apparently was. There are a few glimpses — Adams snapping angrily at his children; Adams’ congressional comrades rolling their eyes when he makes a historical reference — but overall, Giamatti’s Adams is rather likeable.

Giamatti’s performance has received mixed reviews. David Hinckley of the N.Y. Daily News calls it “an extraordinary performance,” and Matt Rousch of TV Guide says Giamatti was “splendid.” Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times, on the other hand, didn’t like anything about Giamatti as Adams:

John Adams is the weakest part of “John Adams.” … Giamatti is the wrong choice for the hero. … Giamatti is a prisoner of a limited range and rubbery, cuddly looks — in 18th-century britches and wigs, he looks like Shrek.

I have been enjoying the mini-series and Giamatti’s portrayal. Stanley’s critique is way over the top. Absurdly, Stanley actually laments that the great Charles Laughton (who died, oh, about 46 years ago) was not available for the part. Still, I agree that Giamatti did not give us the Adams described in the history books. If Adams was a haughty and mouthy hothead, he just doesn’t come across that way in the HBO series. The result is a few scenes that are a bit puzzling and fall flat, in which the people in Adams’ life respond to him as if he were that firey man, even though in the film he has never been portrayed as such.

Did Giamatti or Director Tom Hooper fear that a more obnoxious Adams would be too much to endure for an 8-1/2 hour series? If so, I disagree. I’m thinking of George C. Scott in “Patton.” All of the same negative adjectives apply to Scott’s Patton, but Scott found a way to put all of those negative attributes on grand display, and yet still give us a Patton who comes across as a great and admirable man. I am guessing that Adams was something like that — a man with many obvious faults, and yet, a man of such intellect and personal power and devotion to the cause that his contemporaries found a way to admire him nonetheless.

Giamatti’s John Adams is more of an ordinary guy, neither provoking our anger or achieving our high regard. It is an interesting portrayal in a very interesting series, but it fails to do justice to the man Jefferson called: “The Colossus of that Congress — the great pillar of support to the Declaration of Independence, and its ablest advocate and champion…”