Hearts
in Atlantis is based on two short stories from a collection
of the same title by Stephen King. The plot is a familiar
one: A stranger comes into a small New England town, and unusual
events transpire. Whereas The Stranger (1946)
featured a fascist after World War II, Hearts in Atlantis,
directed by Scott Hicks, gives only obscure clues about the
stranger in a town near Bridgeport, Connecticut, during 1960
(though the filming actually took place in several Virginia
towns). Ted Brautigan (played by Anthony Hopkins) is the stranger,
who rents the upstairs flat in a duplex owned by Liz Garfield
(played by Hope Davis) but gives vague answers to all questions
about his identity. The hero of the film is Bobby Garfield
(played by Anton Yelchin), Liz’s eleven-year-old son,
whose father died when he was five. Shortly after taking up
residence, Brautigan offers to pay Bobby $1 per day to read
to him articles in the daily newspaper and to keep on the
lookout for evil men who are after him. Bobby accepts because
he wants to buy a bicycle, as his mother professes to be too
poor to afford such a purchase, though her purchase of expensive
clothes belies her claim, and her cancellation of a birthday
dinner to have sex with her boss reveals what kind of woman
she and her boss are. (He later rapes her on a supposed weekend
business trip.) In time, Bobby and Brautigan bond, especially
after the stranger tells him a story about a famous football
game and gives fatherly advice about the joy surrounding a
boy’s first kiss. On one occasion Brautigan appears suddenly
to stop a local bully, who threatens to fondle Bobby’s
girlfriend Carol Gerber (played by Mika Boorem) and to beat
up Bobby, by telling the bully that he knows about a deep
secret, namely, that he puts on his mother’s clothes
at home. Later, Brautigan puts Carol’s dislocated shoulder
back in place after the same bully later beats up Carol. When
evidence of the manhunt for Brautigan appears in town, Bobby
at first does not want to alert him, fearful that he will
lose a friend, but soon the dragnet closes in, Liz spitefully
reports him to the anonymous posse, and Brautigan is whisked
away in a limousine by mysterious characters. We are led to
believe that Brautigan is one of many psychics abducted by
J. Edgar Hoover to root out Communists, a farfetched tale
indeed. Thereafter, Liz and Bobby move, as she is fired after
the rape and finds new employment in a town outside Boston.
The film begins and ends with scenes of an adult Bobby (played
by David Morse), who returns to the town to attend the funeral
of his best friend, who willed him a baseball mitt at the
age of eleven, and he drops by the house where he once lived.
The nostalgia of the film serves to remind filmviewers that
one’s life can often be shaped by true friends who are
long gone. MH
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