HBO’S “JOHN ADAMS”
Depriving Basic Human Rights Leads to Acts of Terror, Revolution
I have been enjoying the HBO mini-series “John Adams” since it was released on DVD June 10. Parts of the film are quite entertaining, even riveting; some segments are a bit more tedious. That being said, I enthusiastically recommend the entire 8-1/2-hour series to anyone who appreciates the importance of history, particularly our own revolutionary history.
You will also like “John Adams” if you enjoy a great character study. Interesting characters abound in John Adams’ world. Paul Giamatti as John Adams, Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, and Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin are all outstanding. David Morse is visually striking as George Washington, though his portrayal fails to do justice to the man who commanded the adulation of his countrymen. Stephen Dillane offers a puzzling portrayal of Thomas Jefferson.
The script is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2001 book by master historian David McCullough. The score, especially its theme, is magnificent and infectious. The seven episodes (on three DVDs) range from 60 to 90 minutes each.
John Adams was a Massachusetts lawyer and farmer who became one of the most vocal proponents of the American Revolution. After independence was won, Adams was a chief architect of our new republic and the second president of our united states. At this writing, I have watched the first five of the seven episodes. I greatly enjoyed the first two. The third, fourth and fifth episodes are less noteworthy and sometimes dreary, though they have their moments. I am hopeful the final two episodes will equal the first two. I will comment on “John Adams” in a series of four posts, beginning with this, my reaction to Part 1, “Join or Die.”
“John Adams” begins with the Boston Massacre, Mar. 5, 1770. Five civilians including one teenager were killed by British soldiers who occupied the colonial seaport. Much of the first episode is devoted to the trial of the eight British soldiers charged with murder. Adams defied the public’s wrath by defending the soldiers, and proved his legal prowess by winning acquittal for six of the soldiers and reduced charges for the other two. Adams was 34 years old.
Focusing on the Boston Massacre was an ingenious way to open the series. We viewers are immediately plunged into the bitter and volatile relationship between the colonies and Britain in the years shortly preceding the Revolutionary War. From the start, John Adams is at the center of things and torn by both sides, as he continued to be for the rest of his life.
Adams believed strongly in law and government. He would later be labeled a “federalist,” and by some, a “monarchist,” because he believed in the strong arm of government. At the end of the trial, when all chant, “God save the King,” Adams does so heartily. It is telling, in a later scene, when the phrase is chanted again, but Adams can no longer utter the phrase. What an agonizing decision those colonists faced, many of whom considered themselves loyal British subjects, their anger provoked because they were being denied their rights as free Englishmen. The decision to declare independence from the crown was not made easily, and it was not made by anarchists, but by citizens of law who felt the king and his tyrannical dealings left them no other choice.
The most startling scene in “Join or Die” is the tarring and feathering of a British customs agent. Stripped naked, his head and body covered with hot tar, paraded around town on a rail — the scene shows that normally civil people can be driven to acts of terror and revolution when they are denied the basic rights due them as citizens and human beings.
This first episode will have a special interest for attorneys, since so much of it takes place in the courtroom. (“Join or Die” becomes an interesting partner piece to “Amistad,” the 1997 Steven Spielberg film in which Anthony Hopkins plays John Quincy Adams, who served as defense attorney in the trial of slaves who mutineered on a slave ship). I would be interested to know how accurate is “Join or Die’s” depiction of a colonial-era trial. In the gallery and balcony, observers stand rather than sit, and frequently sound their opinion about the proceedings.
I think Giamatti is excellent in this series. However, his over-the-top depiction of Adams the trial lawyer struck me more as an actor playing an attorney than an actual trial lawyer. As Adams famously said in his closing argument, “Facts are stubborn things.” Adams had the facts on his side, and facts are made no more factual by being shouted so loudly and dramatically, as Giamatti’s Adams does throughout the trial. A good orator knows that a little dramatics goes a long way, and that too much histrionics is counterproductive.
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See second post: “John Adams: Great and Grating, or Ordinary and Likeable?”
