A Home at the End of the World
Length: 2 hours, 0 minutes
Studio: Warner Independent Pictures
Website: http://www.wip.warnerbros.com/ahome/
Release Date: 2004-08-13
Cast: Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn, Dallas Roberts, Sissy Spacek, Matt Frewer
Director: Michael Mayer
Screenwriter: Michael Cunningham, Keith Bunin
Music Score: Linda Cohen
WorkNameSort: A Home at the End of the World
Our Rating: 3.00
Sometimes I think that the movies made from Michael Cunningham’s books exist just to remind progressives that even our open minds have their limits. The Hours, after all, was a prolonged test of liberal sensibilities. Is the lot of women in society begging for improvement? Absolutely. Should we be kinder in our treatment of the mentally ill? Without a doubt. And is a distraught housewife justified in doing whatever it takes to effect personal emancipation like abandoning her kid if necessary? Sorry. Can’t go there with ya.
It says something for A Home at the End of the World adapted by Cunningham himself and directed by theater veteran Michael Mayer that it comes out of the gate with an even fuzzier philosophy, yet manages to remain genuinely endearing for some time. In Cleveland circa 1967, young Bobby Morrow (Andrew Chalmers) is introduced to the consciousness-expanding potential of LSD by his adoring older brother. Though the ensuing years bring more than their share of family tragedy, Bobby (who matures into a shaggy-haired teenager played by Erik Smith) uses that early indoctrination into Love Power to become a benign force of freedom in the lives of those he cares about. That includes pal Jonathan (Harris Allan), a closeted gay kid whose advances Bobby returns but not because the latter is queer himself. Rather, his hippie upbringing has made him into a sort of pansexual Peter Pan. Bobby even works his seductive magic on Jonathan’s mother (a funny Sissy Spacek), getting her hooked on marijuana and Laura Nyro.
You can feel Michael Medved cringing at these “family values,” yet Cunningham and Mayer keep every episode from plunging into the cute. It’s only when the timeframe shifts again, finding the characters all grown up in 1982, that the delicate balance is shot to hell. Jonathan (Dallas Roberts) is living in New York natch and cohabiting with Clare (Robin Wright Penn), a redheaded urban bohemian who wants to have a child in the worst way. When Bobby arrives on the scene (played by Colin Farrell, poorly imitating Smith’s winning mannerisms), the pool of potential daddies increases by one. The ensuing cycle of birth, illness and communal living seems increasingly arbitrary: The filmmakers are so intent on formulating a grand argument in favor of nontraditional families that they sacrifice most of their story’s momentum and coherence to do it. All that’s left to do is bemusedly count the times the word “home” (or some variant thereof) is uttered onscreen; it’s often enough to warrant a drinking game. Ever get the feeling somebody’s trying to tell you something?
This article appears in Aug 11-17, 2004.