In 1986 Rob Reiner directed Stand By Me based on Stephen King's story The Body, and it proved to be a huge success. Then in 1990 or 1991 for the United Kingdom, Reiner directed Misery also based on a Stephen King book - but very different from Stand By Me.
The plot of Misery revolves around a novelist, Paul Sheldon, who has spent nearly all of his writing career writing a series of romance novels about a woman named Misery. But his car crashes in a blizzard and he is rescued by a nurse who also happens to be his so-called "number one fan". While nursing him back to health she finds the last of the Misery books, and as a thank you for nursing him back to health the novelist agrees to let her read it. And then she discovers his intention is to kill off the character. So she resorts to doing things like breaking his ankles with a sledgehammer and knocking him out unless he writes the character back to life.
The casting choices for the lead parts were very good. You have James Caan as the novelist who is very likeable. He definitely gives a good performance in this film and I found myself being very impressed with all his work in this film as a whole. And he was definitely the right man for the part.
And of course you have Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes. She is especially entertaining to watch and gives a very good performance. What I find so impressive about her performance here is how quickly and easily she can go from acting very nice to psychopathic. What certainly works about Wilkes is that when the viewer is introduced to her she seems very kind but you know very soon that at some point she will go psychopathic. When you know that is going to happen you may feel slightly annoyed waiting for the inevitable to occur since it is the major driving force of the movie. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her performance in the movie and do I think she was worthy of it? Yes I do.
This film really only has one subplot and that is about a small-town sheriff played by Richard Farnsworth whose job it is to find Sheldon. Farnsworth does a perfectly fine job here. But it's really the amusingly barbed dialogue he has with his wife that makes him stand out in a film with a relatively small cast.
In the case of the films score it definitely works in its favor and it especially suits certain scenes in the film. But what I can not accept about the music in this film is the background music that is played during a dinner scene between the two leads. I just cant figure out why you would have music like that in a film of this nature.
On to the subject of the cinematography, this is by the now well-known director Barry Soonefeld who went on to direct films like The Addams Family and all the Men In Black movies. But here he is in charge of the photography and when the film opens the camera is cleverly focusing on three things: a glass of champagne, a match and a cigarette, which will become very important later on. I also would like to mention the shots of Sheldon in his wheelchair - these are also very well done. I was pleasantly surprised with how well his work on this film turned out.
My only major problem with this film is a scene where Sheldon is exploring the house he is trapped in, and he discovers that Wilkes was once tried but never convicted of several infant deaths while working as a nurse at a hospital. I feel that that was adding to give the her a possible motivation for why she does what she does. But it is not really explored in depth. Maybe there was no motivation and she just went insane one day and the infant deaths was how it all started for her.
In conclusion Misery is a very well made, suspenseful psychological thriller with very good performances from the lead actors and impressive cinematography - another excellent King/Reiner collaboration. It's especially impressive considering that it is such a departure from their previous collaboration.
Having taken all my pros and cons of the movie into account, I'm going to give Misery..
B
Thank you for reading.
