I freely confess to being out of step with many movie/fiction lovers by not normally being a Stephen King fan, as I sometimes find his brand of horror too twisted for my liking (each to their own, etc etc). HOWEVER, on 29 November 2021 I watched a movie inspired by Low Men In Yellow Coats, the first (and longest) in a series of four interconnected novellas and one short story within a collection by King entitled Hearts In Atlantis (1999), and it totally blew me away. Indeed, its emotional pull upon my heartstrings and reawakening of poignant, nostalgic memories from my younger days became almost too much to bear at times. Set in the 1960s, the decade of my own childhood, the movie was a compelling fantasy/sci fi thriller entitled Hearts In Atlantis.
Directed by Scott Hicks and released in 2001 by Warner Bros Pictures, Hearts In Atlantis stars Anthony Hopkins as an elderly man named Ted Brautigan, who is endowed with mysterious psychic powers that include telepathy and telekinesis, but he is on the run from secret government agents (referred to by him as the Low Men) from whose scientific experimental establishment he had earlier escaped.
Arriving at a sleepy rural Connecticut town (but filmed in Virginia), Ted is befriended by a lonely 11-year-old boy there named Bobby Garfield (an early role for the greatly-missed Anton Yelchin), whose widowed mother, Liz Garfield (Hope Davis), owns the house where Ted lodges while hiding from his shadowy pursuers. Liz is interested only in herself and flirting with men, ignoring her son's needs, uncaring about his happiness, and leaving him to fend for himself for much of the time, which he spends playing with his only friends, Sully and Carol, whenever possible. However, during his stay with them Ted becomes a mentor and a genial paternal figure to Bobby, the first adult in his life to show any care about his well-being, which changes both of their lives for the better – but the Low Men are drawing ever nearer…
Finally, after experiencing a very traumatic incident during what she'd assumed would merely be a working holiday with her boss and his male associates, when she arrives back home and misunderstands an incident that had happened there in her absence, Liz lashes out in a spiteful act of betrayal for money, which not only backfires on her but also has cataclysmic consequences for Ted and Bobby, engineering a sudden, permanent separation between them. However, the fond memory of their all-too-brief yet life-affirming friendship will remain with both of them forever, and will fundamentally shape Bobby's growth from a boy into a man.
Hopkins's performance as Ted, which he apparently based upon his maternal grandfather, is thoroughly spellbinding, and is exactly what was needed to portray this enigmatic yet profoundly inspiring figure succinctly, emotionally, yet never cloyingly or in any way maudlin. So too is Yelchin's portrayal of Bobby as an imaginative yet still-innocent boy on the brink of adolescence, living one final but uniquely magical summer as a child before the arrival of autumn and the onset of maturity, sweeping away all of his boyhood dreams and aspirations like fallen leaves strewn upon the ground, and leading him steadily, inexorably toward manhood.
Indeed, although this wasn't the meaning given to it by Stephen King in his original writings, to the movie's director Scott Hicks the phrase 'Hearts In Atlantis' represented the lost domain of childhood. This is emphasised by the movie's structure, in which the principal story is book-ended by scenes featuring Bobby now as a middle-aged businessman (played by David Morse), making a nostalgic return to his hometown after reading that his boyhood buddy Sully, who had become a decorated soldier, had recently been killed in a traffic accident.
Bobby and his mother had moved away to Boston shortly after Ted's disappearance during that memorable summer all those years ago, and had never gone back. Now, Sully is gone, Bobby discovers that his boyhood home here is an abandoned ruin, and he meets a young woman who turns out to be Carol's daughter. But what had happened to Carol, Bobby's other childhood friend, and with whom he had shared his very first kiss here so long ago? Is it wise to revisit the past?
Hearts In Atlantis is unquestionably one of the most moving, engrossing films that I have seen for a long while. Another of my 10p treasures too – having bought it the previous day in a local charity shop's regular "ten DVDs for £1" sale. And yes, it was the tenth DVD, selected by me simply to make up the required total number, because after reading on its back cover that the film was based upon a work by Stephen King, I'd nearly placed it back on the shelf. But something about its brief story outline on the cover suggested that this may be different from the usual King fare, so I decided, for 10p, to take a chance on it. And I am so glad that I did!
If you get the chance to watch Hearts In Atlantis, do so, you won't regret it. Also, I hope that Stephen King will write many more works like those that gave rise to this superb movie, because it is a potent testament to how very capable he is of creating so much more than mere horror.
If you'd like a taster of what to expect from Hearts In Atlantis, be sure to click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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