Always a Time for Misery

Film Reviewed: Misery

Director: Rob Reiner

Date Watched: 29 October 2021

jamesintexas rating: **** (highest rating)

This film is a stone-cold classic. Without seeing it for at least twenty years, a random sick day and a friend's Annie Wilkes' costume brought me back to this taut thriller which was my very first Stephen King novel.  I love it. James Caan, confined to a bed and wheelchair for most of the film, shines as Paul Sheldon, a meticulous writer of Misery Chastain romances that he disdains. Unfortunately, he packs his latest non-Misery book into his '65 Mustang and drives into a blizzard in Colorado, ending up tossed aside in an upside down car, only to be rescued by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes. 

Annie (Kathy Bates, a revelation, in the first role I ever saw her play), won the Oscar for her performance, and 32 years later it holds up.  Annie Wilkes is simultaneously cheery, horrifying, malevolent, unhinged, silly, rapturous, giddy, immensely lonely, and wildly swinging among all the moods.  Hosting her favorite writer after rescuing him from said accident, Wilkes sounds finds Paul's profanity-laden new manuscript (not a Misery novel), hates it, and the writer then becomes trapped as his number one fan compels him to burn his new novel and return to Misery work.

There are so many layers and levels here, the first of which is all the fun Reiner has with the title of the film and the character.  Caan is doing great work here.  Annie blasts Liberace records, bonds with her pet pig, and has a "flair" for decorating.  Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen are great fun as the Sheriff and Deputy on the case in the small town.  Both are hilarious and dry; their characters seem ripped from a Shakespeare play for comic relief and a break in the tension.

Misery is taut, 90 minutes or so, moving with speed and concision.  Reiner utilizes slow zooms and intense close-ups on his two leads' faces, close-ups that make Bates appear slightly off, filling the screen as she pontificates about the serials cheating her as a kid.  The film makes me think a lot about art and how artists create art and who they create art for.  Lauren Bacall's small role as Paul Sheldon's publicist bookends the film, itself calling our attention to her great string of films, her own contribution to the art of cinema.  The claustrophobic nature of the subject matter mean that Reiner had to be endlessly inventive in his shots and sequencing.  To craft both Misery and The Princess Bride in one lifetime is truly a marvel!

A four-star classic.