Hearts in Atlantis (2001)

Hearts in Atlantis made me concerned when it came out in 2001.  The book is a collection of stories loosely revolving the Vietnam experience.  Three stories - the title story, "Blind Willy" and "Why We're in Vietnam" - deal with it directly.  Two others, "Low Men in Yellow Coats" and "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling", serve as the basis for the movie, and revolve around a young boy named Bobby and his recollection of a turning point in his childhood.

While the majority of the stories in the book do not have supernatural elements and are some of the best examples of Stephen King's general fiction writing, the main story the movie was based on does.  Even more concerning for me when I heard about a movie adaptation was who the low men were.  In King's expanded Dark Tower universe they are called Can-Toi, and are the offspring of humans and a race of humanoid creatures with animal features called Taheen.  They pretty much serve as a retrieval service for people who escape certain institutions of the Crimson King were children are used to break the beams that hold reality together.

The big problem with that is, since so many different film studios made Stephen King films and pretty much none of them at that point, even the television adaptation of The Stand, tried to link his stories together.  There was some tenuous connection with characters in the movies that took place in Castle Rock, but otherwise the grander multiverse that everything took place in was ignored.  And, true to form, they did that as well with Hearts in Atlantis, which resulted in quite a bit of fan backlash at the time since Ted Brautigan would ultimately play a major role in the over-arching story.

Bobby (Anton Yelchin) lives with his mother Liz (Hope Davis) in Harwich, Connecticut.  His father is dead, leaving Liz as the only provider in 1960, and to make ends meet she often leases unused rooms in their house.  One day a new tenant, Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins), arrives.  He is an older gentleman, well-read and friendly toward Bobby and his friends Carol Gerber (Mika Boorem) and John Sullivan (Will Rothhaar), but he has his eccentricities.  He agrees to pay Bobby to read him the paper, but as a pretense to have him look out for "low men in yellow coats" who may be searching for him.

Ted appears to have some psychic abilities and is able to pass that along to people who touch him.  As the kids' lives go on, with Bobby's mother becoming less involved in his life and Bobby and Carol running afoul of the local group of bullies, it also appears that Ted may not be as strange as he seems.  Much of what he predicts will happen begins to come true and Bobby, grateful for many of the things Ted has done for him, tries to concoct a way for him to protect his friend. 

Removing the Can-Toi completely leads to a lot more confusion in the resulting story.  It also means anything having to do with beam breaking, the Crimson King or the Dark Tower is also gone.  Instead of replacing it with any solid explanation screenwriter William Goldman only gives hints that maybe Brautigan is involved with the psychic experiments being conducted by the CIA.  Brautigan never confirms this and the Low Men themselves are only shown in shadow, often in repeated footage.  Because of the changes that had to be made to remove the story from a bigger universe it feels like the supernatural element is undercooked.

What does work is the friendship between Carol, Bobby and Ted, and much of the vibe will remind one of Stand by Me in pacing and nostalgia.  Perhaps a little too much in places.  Those elements were in the story, but not as much as the reveal of who Brautigan was and the emergence of Bobby's creative side.  Carol also becomes a much more significant character throughout the other stories than Bobby does.  Still, both Anton Yelchin and Mika Boorem handle their part of the film well, which means a lot when playing next to someone like Anthony Hopkins.  Even with all the other changes to the story he plays Brautigan the way I pictured him. 

I don't believe Hearts in Atlantis did too well at the box office.  It is somewhat remembered, mainly for Hopkins's performance and as the first movie for Yelchin, who would tragically die in an accident 15 years later when his career was really beginning to take off.  It didn't get good word of mouth, mainly for much of what I said above.  There were too many changes to accommodate those not familiar with King's universe and not enough to differentiate it from better adaptations of his material.  I think it has been re-evaluated a bit in hindsight due to the performances and cinematography, and I found a lot more to enjoy this time around as just a story on its own.  Still, it is unfortunately one of the more important of Kings interconnected stories rendered into a simple coming-of-age flick with a bit of a sci-fi veneer thrown in.

Hearts in Atlantis (2001)

Time: 101 minutes

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Mika Boorem, Hope Davis

Director: Scott Hicks