Reel critics

Allen MacDonald

The world of Stephen King is usually characterized by horror and

thrills, but “Hearts in Atlantis” is a reminder that King’s painfully

flawed protagonists are what drive his stories.

There is a sense of desperate nostalgia, of innocence lost and

lamented. The supernatural is King’s tool, used to reveal the underlying

fragility of human beings. The filmmakers were smart enough to preserve

the integrity of this world, and with beautiful results.

“Hearts of Atlantis” centers on the unlikely relationship between

11-year-old Bobby Garfield and a mysterious new boarder, Ted Brautigan,

Anthony Hopkins, who possesses a telepathic power that allows him to read

minds and see flashes of past and present.

This rare ability has Ted on the run from J. Edgar Hoover. Both Ted

and Bobby are deeply lonely and find companionship and hope in their

growing friendship. Fatherless, Bobby is barely being raised by an

inattentive mother, Hope Davis, who hurtfully disparages his father’s

memory. Ted quickly becomes Bobby’s surrogate father, guiding him gently

through the jitters of his first love, Carol Gerber, and the gang of

teenage thugs who terrorize them. Ted inadvertently passing passes his

gift to Bobby -- a perfect metaphor for the new found maturity and

strength Bobby is discovering within himself.

There are scenes in this film that could only be described as poetic,

such as Bobby and Carol’s first kiss on a stalled Ferris wheel with a

cool breeze washing over them while a spectrum of lights pierce the night

-- an image that prints itself so indelibly, you might mistake it as

memory.

You grow to love these characters so deeply, your heart aches and

your eyes well when they are put in harms way.

Director Scott Hicks (Shine) and screenwriter William Goldman (Misery)

wisely keep Ted largely a mystery, revealing little about his history,

but allowing you to intimately know the character -- you don’t know where

he’s from, but you know what he’s about. This focus prevents the

narrative from derailing into a conspiracy film. And, of course, stating

that Hopkins is wonderful would be redundant, but still true. The entire

cast is pitch perfect and understated.

There are a few minor missteps: the present day bookends featuring an

adult Bobby (David Morse) don’t quite gel with the rest of the movie. The

film has a few holes in its story that arouse suspicion that some good

scenes may have been left on the cutting room floor.

I expect “Hearts in Atlantis” will largely be ignored come Oscar time;

it’s not a showy film. But it does engage you and pull you into a world

you’re sad to leave when the credits roll -- and isn’t that everything a

movie should be?

* ALLEN MacDONALD, 28, is currently working toward his master’s degree

in screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.