Popcorn and a Movie

It’s mid-autumn. May I recommend Reiner’s “Misery”?

I watched this Friday with my infant, because we didn’t want to go out and battle the cold to see “Doctor Sleep.” We wanted to honor Stephen King, in one way or another, so we had a 1990 throwback. Here are some things you may not remember about “Misery”:

*It has Lauren Bacall. She is James Caan’s brittle, sophisticated New York agent. We’re not talking about Bergman-esque levels of characterization here. But how fun to see Bacall being dry and fabulous!

*This movie is pretty clearly Hansel and Gretel, by another name. There’s a fairy-tale structure. The protagonist goes off into the woods--literally--having left the comforts of home (Manhattan, in this case). Alone, in peril, in the snow, he meets an alluring lady who happens to be a witch in disguise. He must pretend to be something he is not, in order to outsmart the witch. (We see Caan--in an undervalued performance--craftily asking Bates to join him for champagne, purchase just the right kind of typing paper, help him with a cigarette. All of these moments mean more than they seem to mean--so there’s always a low hum of subtext, to keep things interesting.)

After shoving the witch into the oven (beating Bates to death with a typewriter), our protagonist can return home. Caan ends the movie back at a New York restaurant, enjoying the company of Bacall.

*This movie is pretty clearly the story of King’s alcoholism. Bates is a stand-in for a tall, frothy beer: exciting, but actually not what she promises to be. How many other writers could spin this kind of allegory out of a (sort of pedestrian) struggle with substance abuse?

I had a great time with “Misery,” and you can, too. Yes, above all else: There’s Bates’s performance. Ms. Bates is loopy, half-openly enraged, lost, unpredictable. She seems to have crawled into the skin of this person she is playing. You could do worse than a re-watch of “Misery."

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