Among the most highly regarded films based on the works of Stephen King, Dolores Claiborne (1995) is invariably mentioned.
Dolores Claiborne is a drama film that begins as a standard crime story. Two women fight on the stairs, one falls and suffers fatal injuries. The second goes down and runs for the roller to quickly bring the matter to the end. That’s just at the most crucial moment the postman enters the house and sees this unpleasant scene.
The woman, of course, goes to the police station. And her daughter, with whom she has not spoken for a long time, comes from the big city to help her mother. And to do that is not an easy task. After all, the woman was already accused of murder many years ago - she probably killed her own husband. She managed to avoid punishment. Even her daughter thinks she is guilty. Not to mention local residents and the prosecutor.
We won’t retell the story, but Dolores Claiborne is full of surprises. This film is a vivid example of the cinema of the 1990s with the rhythm of the narrative and style characteristic of that decade.
The main roles in it were played by Katie Bates (Misery), young Jennifer Jason Lee (The Hateful Eight) and Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World).
And the director was Taylor Hackford, who also directed “The Devil’s Advocate”, “Proof of Life” and “Ray”.
Dolores Claiborne is essentially a feminist project. In it, women are victims suffering from the actions of men. However, from the wave of today’s fem projects, it has a significant difference. There is no clear distinction between victims and villains. In the end, it turns out that all the heroes of both sexes are both victims and villains at the same time and alternately.
A very heavy film, Katie Bates doesn't play, she lives in roles, and here, just amazing, she believed from the first to the last frame, not for nothing, according to Wikipedia, on the set of the movie "Misery" when Stephen King met Katie Bates said, she made a lasting impression on me. Later, creating his novel Dolores Claiborne (1992), Stephen King wrote the image of the title character specifically for her. . . 10 out of 10.
Sometimes being a bitch is the best defense for a woman!
(Roughly the 14th minute of the film)
Dolores Claiborn
Plot. Selena comes to her mother Dolores, whom she has not seen for a long time (parted on raised tones). Dolores is accused of murdering one Vera Donovan. An elderly detective insists on Claiborne’s guilt, because she worked as a maid for Vera for many years, and there are sins from the past.
I do not quite understand why film lovers compare this picture with Misery, apparently Katyusha confused. Yes, Claiborne is courting Vera the way Wilkes was courting Paul Sheldon - or rather, ah heh heh, not at all. There is also a small reference with porcelain toys. Let it. Absolutely different movies. With different messages, with different heroes.
Misery is a thriller. Dolores Claiborne, hand on heart, drama. To be honest, I wasn’t impressed with Jennifer Jason Lee as Selena, I would have tried another actress. Katyusha, on the contrary, was beautiful (just Bates is always cool, guys, another level). Although-I-I, no matter what they say, the chemistry between the actresses is clearly absent.
The drama works (let’s give credit to the adequate director Hackford), but not much (as King has on the pages – by the way, I read the book aloof). We're showing mother and daughter. We have to worry about our mother, there is. You can't do it for a daughter. Even the bright (in dramatic terms) scene on the ship, when Selena finally remembers everything - does not touch the soul. Perhaps (I'm not insisting) Hackford went overboard with a giant timekeeping (in 120 minutes). You get a little tired at the end. Subjective.
Another important point is that King did not write about unhappy women (in the clutches of the husband of an alcoholic and a tyrant), no, no. He wrote about strong women! In any case, the film is more sympathetic than repulsive. If you ask me, I'm totally on Dolores' side. Is every human life priceless? Unbelievable nonsense!
You live alone, be anything, your own business, you're only responsible for yourself. When you have a child, you have to be human. You can't? Get the hell out. Lie in the coffin. Hard Zombion? Ah-hee-hee, uncle. Seriously. Are you judging Dolores? Judge me, I'm not going to. House by the road ...
Overall impression: This story is a deep drama with a touch of horror based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. I have always wondered how a master of horror can write not only horror stories in the night, but also unfold the psychology of a person. For example, I love Misery, which is a movie, which is a book of fire.
Dolores Claiborne (Katie Bates), a woman with a difficult fate, worked all her life in the luxurious home of Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt) - the richest resident of a small American island. Dolores has never been more than 50 miles away from this island. Her husband, a drunkard and scuffler, died of an accident years ago, and her daughter, Selina (Jennifer Jason Lee), has not visited her in 15 years. Not too much fun, is it? However, the viewer is more and more immersed in the details of the fate of Dolores. You know her character, you sympathize with her, and most importantly, you live her life with her. And it gets so scary...
My daughter comes back 15 years later, but why? Vera Donovan is dead, and local detective John Mackey (Christopher Plummer) has a grudge against Dolores for years. He's sure the woman killed her employer, that's a motive. So who's Dolores? An unhappy woman or a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
The story of the film instantly plunges into the whirlpool of events, which is remarkable, the past is closely intertwined with the present. The viewer is presented through memories, both Dolores and her daughter. Attention to detail is played filigree genres. The detective begins with the very first notes, and the disturbing thriller part does not leave until the very end. You look with interest at what is happening, which surprises with its turns. Of course, the terrible events with which the tape is so full are deeply embedded in the drama. It is the drama that helps to feel the pain of Dolores and Selina. Since childhood, each of us has formed its own character, features, Selina grew up in a difficult family, which subsequently affected her growing up, caused her an injury. Considering the lives of these 2 women, the thought pops up in my head: “How unfair!”
Katie Bates’ incomparable play is mesmerizing, believe me, as soon as her character cries heart clenches, so sorry for her. But despite the tears, this woman is strong, it is only surprising that she as a persistent tin soldier withstood all the hardships of fate. I cannot say anything about the other actors, they were quite harmoniously in the frame, there are no complaints.
Man is the most terrible creature on the planet, perhaps through psychology you can convey the nightmare of events more potent than any demons. I recommend watching Dolores Claiborne, I am sure you will live the life of the heroine, and a fascinating plot with bright events will be remembered for a long time.
10 out of 10
American actress Katie Bates is best known for her role as Annie Wilkes from the movie Misery, directed by Rob Reiner from the novel of the same name by Stephen King. For his amazing play, the actress was awarded an Academy Award, and Stephen King was so impressed with this role that he stopped writing his next novel “Dolores Claiborne”, as the title heroine kept in mind Katie Bates. The novel was released in 1992, received good press and became a bestseller. Three years later, the eponymous film adaptation came out. The script was written by Tony Gilroy, and directed by Taylor Hackford (both later will make “The Devil’s Advocate”). Well, in the role of Dolores, of course, starred Katie Bates.
The plot of the film is built around three female images: Vera Donovan - a wealthy lady who owns a luxurious house. Dolores Claiborne is a strong woman with a bad temper, working for the first maid; and Selena, a successful journalist and daughter of Dolores, who left home 15 years ago. When Vera Donovan is murdered in the town, suspicion falls on Dolores. Once upon a time, she was accused of murdering her drunken husband.
This picture, as well as the book, due to some circumstances, is not as popular and widely known as many other works of King. At the same time, the writer himself, which happens quite rarely, liked this film adaptation. Most likely, such oblivion of the film is due to the fact that the story told in it is quite harsh, sad and quite real. You don’t want to watch it every day.
However, Taylor Hackford managed to make a great movie. The film is good, ranging from acting, where in addition to Bates starred Jennifer Jason Lee, Christopher Plummer, Judy Parfitt and David Strathairn, ending with the camera work of Gabriel Beristain; from skillful editing flashbacks with proper musical accompaniment, to the overall pace of the story. Notable is the choice of color palette for the present, where cold blue shades emphasize emptiness and loneliness, and for the past, bright light tones idealizing memories.
In conclusion, films like Dolores Claiborne—strong psychological dramas, with a beautiful atmosphere and countless skeletons in closets—are almost never out of date, because they touch the very essence of humanity and pierce to the core. If you love Stephen King or complex thrillers and are not familiar with this picture, then be sure to take the time to watch it.
8 out of 10
Dolores Claiborne is a strange elderly woman, whose unpleasant husband died a long time ago, and now, under strange circumstances, she dies, and also an unpleasant, mistress, whom she took care of for many years. The only daughter lives somewhere in the New York area and does not communicate with her mother, but she comes to the police. What if the mother is a murderer?
For some reason, Stephen King did not like this film adaptation much. But it seems to be a matter of genre preferences. In his Shining, too, he refused to see the intellect and claimed that Kubrick had added too much to his film. With Clayborne, it's pretty much the same story. You look like a mystical thriller, and it turns out almost a family drama. More specifically, a drama about family and people. You just have to let things go as they go. Such is the philosophy of Claiborne, in which there is much more love and reasonable submission to fate than in the seemingly normal people around her. By the way, Jennifer Jason Lee resembles a maniac not much less than Katie Bates, who had experience in another King's film adaptation - Misery. But, it turns out, the apparent maniac can be a victim. That’s why Dolores Claiborne is even more interesting to watch today than it was 20 years ago – the role of women is being rethought. And this reinterpretation is laid down here too - at least the men here, as it should be today, are such bastards. I'm good at it.
The red eclipse of the sun became a turning point in her life.
To be honest, films based on the novels of Stephen King, always look with great interest. "The Shawshank Escape," "The Green Mile," "Misery," "The Shining" are beautiful. Also, the film adaptation of Dolores Claiborne came out quite well.
The plot of the picture, very interesting. He talks about the lifelong hardships of a woman named Dolores Claiborne, who is accused of two murders: Joe's unlucky husband and her rich mistress Vera Donovan. She is despised by all the people in the neighborhood.
It turned out a decent acting. Katie Bates successfully performed the role of a strong spirit of a woman, with a rather difficult and not simple fate. Dolores Claiborne, to some extent, I want to empathize, because she had to endure all the suffering that her husband, rich mistress Vera Donovan, distrust of her daughter, and hostility from others caused her. Jennifer Jason Lee looked convincing as a distrustful daughter in relation to her mother. But at a certain point, remembering something important, and weighing all the pros and cons, Selina still understood where there was an accidental death and where there was an accident. Judy Parfitt looked good in the role of Faith Donovan. At a certain point, the rich woman gave the right advice to her employee, and Dolores successfully used it.
The atmosphere in this film is deeper, it’s not a thriller, but a rather intense drama. Traveling through the depths of Dolores' past, interestingly described throughout the tape, which perfectly displays Red eclipse of the sun - as a sign of a turning point in her life.
Dolores Claiborne is a deep, psychological drama that plunges into its tense atmosphere, which is filled with gloomy and dark shades. The film is about a family in which a difficult and difficult relationship is built. This is a drama filled with secrets that have a deep meaning.
Hey Mrs. Claiborne, who did you kill today? No one yet, but now I know exactly who I will start with.
On a small island cut off from land, which can only be reached by ferry, a rich woman dies, police blame her caretaker Dolores Claiborne for her death. The local sheriff takes on the case with particular zeal, as many years ago, Dolores’ husband died on the island. The daughter of a woman returns to the island to remember the past and why she left her mother.
Dolores Claiborne, one of Stephen King's most tragic and memorable novels, I've read the novel and seen the film, so I know the discrepancies, but at the same time, the film looks interesting. And this is largely due to the actress Katie Bates, who played the sad Dolores Claiborne with a difficult fate.
He who watched the film and remained indifferent to the woman is insensitive and dry as a sheet of paper. She is just a wonderful strong actress who was not afraid to take on such a difficult and exhausting role. A broken and unhappy woman, whose happiness is her daughter, finds the strength to overcome fate. And the significant fact is that this happened at the moment when the solar eclipse occurred in the afternoon. It is very symbolic, the decline of an old life and an old unhappy woman and the birth of a new marriage free from the yoke and heavy burden in the form of a husband who drinks and regularly beats her.
This film shows that one should not be afraid and take decisive actions and not take the situation to the extreme, as happened to Dolores Claiborne. She wanted just female happiness, and as a result received dislike from all residents and misunderstanding from her daughter. If she reported the beatings of her husband and his abuse, everything could be different.
It's also sad to see her daughter, a grown woman who has forgotten what it was as a child, of course it's a defense mechanism to protect herself from pain. But the fact that she did not deserve to scold her mother or call her was the worst thing she could do. That is why the finale is more tragic, when everything becomes clear and the daughter finds the strength to forgive and embrace her mother. At this point, I think any normal person will cry.
One of the most complex and powerful films based on the books of Stephen King. The dark landscapes of the island, alienation with the most loved one, the bitterness of the loss of a friend, Katie Bates, was able to create the most vivid image of a woman who was able to regain her name and the main love of her daughter.
10 out of 10
Two separate fates on the background of one murder
I remember watching this movie at an early age and was very impressed. I didn’t know it was based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, otherwise I would have tried to read it. Same story with Shawshank Escape, two of my favorite childhood movies. Interestingly, Shawshank prison is mentioned in Dolores Claiborne, and actor Bob Gunton, who played in the first owner of the prison, starred in the film by Taylor Hackford - already in a small role as the owner of the city bank. I finally read the book and now I have something to compare it to. I’ll go into more detail on the film itself.
Interestingly, the film and the work of fiction were so different that they complement each other. Personally, I would advise you to read the novel first, otherwise it will not be the same. The film seemed to me much more interesting, more dynamic and darker. In many ways, this is a great merit of the writer, who focused on the investigation of the Vera Donovan case, rather than an old murder, as in the book. And of course, the actors themselves. First of all, Katie Bates, a true master of her craft, with amazing strength and psychologicalism, she plays both a crazy psychopath (from Misery) and depressed by life, but still strong and desperate Dolores. Once I read that seeing her in the film adaptation of his “Misery” Stephen King was so admired by Katie’s play that the image of Dolores Claiborne wrote specifically for her. The two roles have a lot in common.
The atmosphere is well-chosen. She was the one who impressed me the most at the time. A quiet town, fenced off from the whole world: with its own rules, ideas and customs. No wonder Selena - daughter Dolores, so successfully played by Jennifer Jason Lee, does not understand this life, because he did not appear here for many fifteen years. The director made the main bet on the confrontation / misunderstanding of mother and daughter, their former conflicts, not forgotten until now. (This is not in the book at all.) This is another psychological line, perhaps the main one. It was very interesting to watch their complicated relationship develop. The film was filmed in a fishing village on the Canadian island of Nova Scotia. During the shooting there was a terrible fire, the losses were huge, but they were easily covered by the box office.
I really liked the psychological atmosphere of the film, and the musical accompaniment, successfully selected by Danny Elfman, only enhanced the experience. There are no bright special effects, loud dynamic plot with chases or shootouts. Essentially, the whole film is based on an experienced relationship - a mother and daughter, a police officer who failed to understand the long history, and his victim. Such simple and ordinary at first glance feelings, close and familiar. But it is almost impossible to break away from the screen, and when the story ends, you regret that the film has no sequel.
Perhaps there is no more filmed author than the cult “master of horror” Stephen King, who long ago immortalized his name with a huge number of his truly magnificent works. But no matter how often his works do not find their way to wide screens, not many turn out to be truly worthy adaptations of primeval literary novels. Thus, most often misses by, but certainly this category of films cannot be attributed to this film directed by Taylor Hackford.
We can safely say that the director of the film Taylor Hackford managed to shoot a truly magnificent adaptation of the original literary work of Stephen King, which turns out to be on the screen exactly as you imagine the story when you read. What contributes to perhaps the plot itself, which keeps as close as possible to the rich source of the original novel and certainly aims at the most alive. Since unlike the usual works of the writer Stephen King, which distinguish their main task - to scare the viewer and tell another terrible story, this work of King can be safely called one of the most dramatic rich works of the writer.
Since this is not a film about another “baby girl” from the work of Stephen King, but a story about a very strong woman who was very much battered by her entire long life. A life that has long been turned into one continuous torment, through numerous abuses and beatings of a drunken husband, harsh working conditions and hellish labor, which did not leave a minute for rest. Repeatedly returning to the past of the main character by flashback methods, this film fully projects the story of how much the main character sacrificed for her daughter and husband and how much she was hurt not appreciating her victims, spitting directly into the soul and leaving her life almost forever.
The film directed by Taylor Hackford represents that rare category of films in which it is the rich character of the characters that become the center of the entire tape, not the story itself and, of course, this is a great merit of the leading roles of these films. Katie Bates definitely played one of the strongest works in her entire creative career and certainly pleased with how accurately she got into the image of her game. Thus embodying on the screen the image of Dolores, which he appears when reading the original novel. Jennifer Jason Lee, who has always masterfully managed the images of women on the verge of psychological decadence, and this role of the actress was no exception. Incredibly good and Christopher Plummer, who managed to embody on the screen perhaps the most disgusting and repulsive from a human point of view image I have ever seen. The most powerful game and the strongest emotions that so much boiling watching his Detective Mackie.
7 out of 10
Dolores Claiborne is definitely a very worthy adaptation of the great novel by the cult Stephen King, which turns out to be on the screen perhaps exactly as it appears when reading. A very strong dramatic story about the tragic and difficult life of two strong women, which really touches to the core.
As the first of the main reasons why Stephen King is still one of the most screened writers in the world, can be called a priori “cinematography” of his literary style. There is nothing surprising here, because literature, like any other form of communication, undergoes significant changes under the influence of neighboring forms - painting, music or ... cinema. Once the boy Stevie disappeared in theaters and greedily absorbed what was happening on the screen, diving headlong into the worlds of Roger Corman, Don Siegel or Terence Fisher, which subsequently left a deep mark on all his work. Simply put, he began to think cinematically while writing his books. Secondly, it should be noted that the task of King is mainly simply to modernize and modernize the archetypal and textbook ideas of the horror genre, which is the best fit with the policy of Hollywood cinema, which is only engaged in “rereading” the classics, sometimes reaching the absurd (say in the form of the fourth or fifth remake of old as the world of history). But King’s paradox is that, contrary to all expectations, his work miraculously successfully serves as a formative basis not only for films of category B, but also for first-class masterpieces in such complex and “high” genres as drama or psychological thriller.
King’s best film adaptations are farthest removed from fiction and all sorts of mystical interpretations. In The Green Mile, The Shining, The Dead Zone, the presence of the supernatural is purely formal and often questioned, but in The Shawshank Escape, Misery, or the film in question, Dolores Claiborne, there is nothing beyond realism. The whole design is based solely on strong psychological intricacies, brilliantly written characters and philosophical and metaphorical plot developments. In these works, artistically-figurative language develops themes that are absolutely far from the secondary genre of “horror” – existential motives of loneliness and hope (" Escape from the Showshank), the basic laws of psychoanalysis (" The Shining), moral themes of social equality and justice ("The Green Mile), the eternal question of fate and free will ("The Dead Zone), etc.
In this film, the central issue is the intrapersonal struggle between existential duty and accepted ethical concepts. If we delve into history, the most complete expression of this theme is the famous biblical story of Abraham, who for a century waited for the birth of his son, and when the joyful event finally happened, the Lord called from heaven and ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Said, done.
The plot of the film revolves around the story of one family and gradually focuses exclusively on the spiritual contradictions of the mother – Dolores Claiborne and daughter Selena St. George (respectively bearing the name of her father). Dolores, like a hard laborer, worked all her life for a bitch and a bitch named Vera Donovan. She was a damn smart and rich woman, but also extremely cruel. At one time, she even managed to send her own husband to the next world. In secret (even from herself), Dolores dreams of repeating her feat. After all, her dear husband does nothing but drink, sit at home and beat the poor Dolores, when she, squeezed like a lemon, comes in the evening after a work day. However, she could still endure this, because all her sorrows and misfortunes pale at the thought of who she is trying so hard for - her baby Selena (as always the magnificent D. D. Lee) and her future education. Every week, Dolores punctually takes the money earned in blood and sweat (and literally) to the bank and deposits it into Selena’s account. But one day Dolores saw something that radically changed her whole life - Joe rudely molested her daughter. Dolores decides to withdraw all the money and leave. But the bank tells her that the bills have already been cashed out... her husband. Dolores in despair and, unable to contain the grief, tells about his plight to the hostess. Faith dramatically changes tone and advises Dolores one way... once successfully tested by her. Fifteen years later, Selena, a well-educated journalist living in New York City, receives a letter asking her to come to a murder hearing. Vera Donovan, whom her mother is suspected of.
The film is especially good in that it touches on many insoluble antinomies of the psyche and being (and the question of the position of women in society is only their special case). Here is one of them - Dolores dares (heroically overcoming his own fear) to venture risky in all respects, for one - the happiness of his daughter, but... achieves the completely opposite result. We see that Selena is extremely unhappy, squeezed into the grip of despair and hopelessness, is almost on the verge of suicide. But this problem is purely psychological - she is tormented by unconscious memories of her father's harassment, which she projects on her mother, considering her the culprit of all ills. Even in a healthy family, the relationship of daughters-mothers is extremely problematic, but in the case of Dolores and Selena, only a miracle can save them. The second, no less significant, is the antagonism of Dolores’ choice between existential duty and unquestioning civil (murder) and divine (sanctity of marriage) laws (which are figuratively expressed in the character of Detective McKee, played by Christopher Plummer). As a result, it all boils down to the question of whether her action is to be condemned in the generally accepted criteria or is something that goes beyond the boundaries of logical and rational interpretations. Only one person can decide this issue, Chief Justice Dolores is her daughter Selena.
From a technical point of view, Hackford’s film successfully uses the formal developments of the book, in which the entire narrative is conducted on behalf of the main character and acquires the character of not just a candid confession, but a confession. Thanks to the brilliant game of Katie Bates, the story is successfully presented in two intersecting planes at once - objective, when Hackford literally transports us to the past and retrospective, i.e. presented through the eyes of Dolores herself, in which a whole range of inexplicable and indescribable emotions is read. This technique allows Hackford to sometimes confuse the two realities and give Dolores (as, indeed, Selena) a kind of ghost, lost in memories, lost in time, and the whole story takes on a philosophical, metaphysical color in the style of “lost time”. Prousta. All this discursive-abstract splendor is reinforced and thoroughly cemented by the professional technical skill of the good old Danny Elfman and the skillful tricks of the operator Gabriel Bernstein (especially with regard to the color scheme and the play of chiaroscuro, “death during a solar eclipse” is damn beautiful).
In general, Dolores Claiborne is undoubtedly one of the best adaptations of Stephen King, standing on a par with The Shining or The Green Mile. But for unknown reasons, this film is considered some kind of “shallow”, almost a household melodrama with a boring plot and a banal production. I hope that with this review, if I did not refute it, I at least raised doubts about the unjust accusation of Dolores for crimes that it did not commit.
The endless despondency of being covered “one-story America” with a wave of pampered violence. Swirling in a languid Danse macabre of angels with battered porcelain wings and weary demons in cowboy boots with downed heels. Under the trampling and shuffling of the legs of dancing Derry, Castle Rock, Salimov's lot. Born from connections of neurons imprinted on wood dust. They are waiting for guests - readers who dared to find out what Stephen King was dreaming. In '92 he dreamed of "dust bunnies" with sharp teeth and a dried well in the thickets of blackberries. In '92, he dreamed of Dolores Claiborne with rough hands and the patience of a mule.
Pratchett's assertion that reading=necromancy holds true for both the writer and his characters. Every time the reader opens the book, he raises the dead, sometimes falling into necrophilia. The more beautifully described the “dead”, the easier it is to revive him, but the more difficult it is to accept his “incarnation” on film, because “any film adaptation is always poorer than the original”. Applied to “Dolores Claiborne” by Taylor Hackford (a film interpretation of the novel of the same name by Stephen King), this is only partly true, since the very image of the main character is taken from the actress who played her – Katie Bates.
Dull pain in the broken kidneys, swallowed teeth, chest mutilated with a canner knife, severed legs - as much torture as King's heroines survived, witches did not know in the warm embrace of the inquisitors. The title of his book, Men Who Hate Women, fits more than Larsson’s. Dolores Claiborne is no exception. Immersion in the life of the main character is complete, hopeless and irrevocable. As is often the case, a book crammed into a script has lost a lot. In the film adaptation, the horrors of marriage are minimized, more attention is paid to the relationship between mother and daughter than to the spouse-erupt. One of the key characters is Vera Donovan, cut like Hitchcock’s Blonde, which makes Selena’s final speech to the servants of the law sound naive and unconvincing, taking on a strange resemblance to manipulation: the “white girl” from “Time to Kill.” Playing on emotions, adjusting to the simple and understandable viewer, not familiar with the book, the word “friendship” is what connected the two women. Without the guilt-resurrected children and the dust bunnies hiding under the widow’s bed, the film turned out to be paler than it could be, and the study of the psychology of the “household” killer is not as ruthlessly comprehensive as in the book. To seal the hole, the creators fished out the dark corner of a suede and vindictive detective, thereby emphasizing the almost feminist mood of the film, where male characters are either monsters or simpletons.
Carmine tears on the pale cheeks of the tormented victim dry up only when the victim becomes the executioner. Rosa Marena. Dolores Claiborne, not Dolores St George. A bitch who will burn the cows of others who dare to shit in her field. The credibility of the image created by Bates, her white-stone tranquility is the rod on which the tape is held. She is a purely King's heroine in the film, where little remains of the original. Frankly spitting on the anti-dawns of the American outback, deceptive honey sunsets and public hatred, Dolores tells her story to her daughter who returned to her hometown. She is driven by hope, bitter as the milk of Rosa-Sarona on the lips of a starving man, but necessary for the survival of both heroines. To save her daughter, Dolores killed her father and still ruined her life. Bitch laws of existence have worked, according to which bricks do not just fall on the head, but icicles with savor break children's skulls. The consequences of the crime, like circles on the water diverge further, an artificial wave disturbs everything that floats on the surface. Years later, King in 1922 returned to this theme, in the same sets of a lonely farm and a tempting well hole, a husband kills his wife, ruining his son's life. Happy ending is impossible in the original in the tape is necessary, because it is not the people who justify Dolores, but the daughter who recognizes her right, only this matters, because the accents have already shifted from the study of the psychology of the killer to the family drama and further to the consequences of incest. Dolores Claiborne's connection to Gerald's Game finds a new solution in the film. Selena is a copy of Jesse. Both survived the abuse of their fathers, both deeply traumatized and forgotten what they experienced. To get out of the shackles, now Selena must cut through the living, peeling off the skin with slippery meat to walk through the harsh metal. Chew and swallow a sticky, nauseating sweet candy from licorice root. On a dark morning, remember her father making her do something dirty and nasty. To see the truth, for a lie, cleverly woven by reason, destroyed it.
Strelk’s eyes slid tirelessly through the barren lands of Leone’s spaghetti westerns, and if you send “It” under the press, you can squeeze “Wine from Dandelions”, in the sunny yellowness of which Pennywise’s smile flashes. References to Lovecraft, Steinbeck, Jackson (a couple dozen more authors) and popular culture are as common in King as cliffhangers, Springsteen, and the Red Sox; love, hope, and kids who are necessarily smarter than adults. The recognizable style and skill of the narrator are familiar markers, but perhaps the author’s work best characterizes the “activity” of his character in Sons of Anarchy. Dismember, recycle, drain. Fear takes the place of corpses. The main one is the fear of death. Lifelong works or pieces of skin torn from perplexing reality are stories, King’s books about predestination and the end of the world for each individual human. Agony, white tunnel, fiery tar or paradise pits. Everyone will be rewarded according to faith. Or perhaps it will not be rewarded at all, and it will end in infinite darkness without the slightest sign of matter or spirit. Nothing. Ashes. Crap. “The ka marks the time of every man and woman.” Strawberry spring. Indian summer. In the minutes of a solar eclipse, when bats with ink wings scratch the purple sky, and ice cream melts from the heat, sweetness flows down the fingers. Under the ringing of ice cubes in a glass of mint tea and a whisper of tires across the wet asphalt. Sooner or later, but always equally bitter. However, as long as the Turtle keeps the world on its back and the moira scissors away from your thread, there is hope that things can be fixed. Not to return the pieces eaten by the langoliers, but to use what is left to realize not only dreams, but also dreams, to say such important "sorry" and "forgive."
Thank you for your attention, this reader. Long days and pleasant nights.
Homecoming is one of the main "wandering" plots in the classification of Jorge Luis Borges. Based on such a literary document as Homer’s Odyssey, many authors treated this construction in their own way. A long journey over threeteen lands from the native land always leads back. But there are few times when the world remains the same, although the “home” that has not changed over the years could be a good bid for a horror movie. So Selina St. George, returning to visit the arrested on suspicion of murder native mother Dolores Claiborne (Claiborne is a surname in her virginity), is not at all in the sunny world of his own childhood. The town of Little Toll in Maine (of course, because this is a film adaptation of Stephen King) turns out to be a gloomy place where everything seems to be shrouded in the fog of the past. And she has to make a connection between herself and her own past, which is personified by the image of her mother - a tough, coarse woman.
At first, it seems that the heroines have no common ground: a lonely provincial woman who worked as a nurse, and a successful journalist from the real Big Apple. What can unite them except the shaky and distant past, whose secrets are hidden under the veil of time? But appearances are deceiving. There are no more similar people in the world. Although it is not only about closeness, but more about the closeness of the soul. The modern world is very cruel to women’s attempts to be equal to men. And this is not at all about the stupid trend of the last decade about objectification and other fundamental denials of psychology, psychoanalysis and biological kinship of man with the Beast Kingdom. The heroines are forced to adapt to the surrounding reality, but any attempt to break out of the allotted habitat causes not just resistance, but real opposition. And you cannot escape this struggle without losing a part of yourself.
Interestingly, the best adaptations of Stephen King’s works are novels more devoid of typical moves for the “king of horror”. No live cars, laundry presses, killer dogs, killer cats and all that. Although in this series there is an exception in the form of the painting “Christine” by John Carpenter, which, however, is quite free and ironic about the original source. But the best films based on his works may not be devoid of a mystical component, but are more based on psychological portraits of the characters. Here you can make a whole list: “The Shining”, “Carrie”, “Shawshank Redemption”, “Green Mile”, “Misery”, etc. In the same series, you can add a film by Taylor Hackford. Let, in almost every case, the authors got not the best, rather simply written works, which, oddly enough, when transferred to the cinema, only won. Stephen King could become a good screenwriter, because everything that came out of his pen most often resembles movie scripts or movie novels (there was such a genre). Dotted psychologically, but endowed with a large number of small details and characteristics, the characters of King’s novels and stories are an excellent test for filmmakers, which they can relay, however they want, due to the variability of interpretation of any events. It is impossible not to add that the novel itself was written under the impression of the adaptation of “Misery” by Rob Reiner, and in particular, the game of Katie Bates, who in “Dolores Claiborne” completely outplayed her on-screen counterpart.
And if you try to embed the work in a certain conditional cinematic heritage of Stephen King, then Dolores Claiborne will very easily find its niche. After all, at its core, this film involves a typical issue of King’s human cruelty, which is present in almost everyone, and sooner or later bursts out. Like "Carrie," the title character's brutality is a reaction to Wednesday. Where Carrie has been the victim of her mother’s religious bigotry and animal violence by her peers, Dolores Claiborne suffers from a conservative-patriarchal lifestyle in a small, backwater town. But even the daughter of Selina, who escaped to the big metropolis, still remains the same downtrodden provincial, forced to punch her way through sweat and blood. And their only crime is that they just exist. And through the generations they carry the slogan:
Sometimes being a bitch is the only way out for a woman.
“A man always finds something to be grateful for, no matter in what distress he finds himself.”
Dolores Claiborne is a book that Stephen King dedicated to his mother, putting, apparently, all the love and respect for her in the image of the main character. A strong, strong-willed woman, but at the same time capable of the deepest feelings. Nothing better characterizes Dolores (Katie Bates) as the phrase often flying from her mouth: "Sometimes you have to be a bitch to survive." It’s like cruelty that breeds good, and where, in fact, you go when you are surrounded only by negative personalities. And most of it concerns her drunken husband, to a lesser extent Vera Donovan (who has her own compelling reasons for this behavior). The only outlet for Claiborne is her daughter, a bright angel who suffers from the relationship between her parents.
The life of this large woman turned out to be quite rich, which you can not immediately note, referring to the fact that for the last thirty years she was first a maid, and then a nurse at the helpless but powerful Donovan. Dolores is under investigation for the second time, taking all the blows, as long as everything is fine with her daughter. By the way, compared to the book, Claiborne and her husband had three children in it, which director Taylor Hackford and his screenwriter Tony Gilroy decided to omit. The changes affected other things in the picture, falling under the ruthless editorial scissors.
Starting from the first minutes, we watch the film, as if looking a little behind the end of the book, as if we unexpectedly found an unpublished continuation of the novel from King himself on a dusty shelf. Hackford allows himself to change the action somewhat, introducing adult Selena (Jennifer Jason Lee), the grown-up daughter of the convincing heroine Kathy Bates, into the epicenter of events. Claiborne does not sit on the interrogation, as it was on the pages of the narrative, telling about what happened, in the tape she is already on a par with her daughter plunges into those distant, and influenced everyone without exception, times with the help of bright flashbacks.
The defense mechanisms of her daughter, Selena, have erased the disturbing memories, but the mental trauma caused by her father’s actions will never leave her, forcing her to drink more and more antidepressants with water. Remorse will not leave Dolores herself, who regrets that she could not fully protect her child from evil. And now it's the right time for them to help each other by sorting things out, putting everything in place. And as a opposing force, the director adds the charismatic character Christopher Plummer - stubborn detective, hound dog of justice, John Mackey.
Hackford's film turned out on a single strained nerve, like a string on a crying electric guitar. If one does not judge strictly the parallel lines between the book and the film, then cutting some things down and adding Plummer (and the slightly more minor John C. Riley, for example) seems a fitting addition to the picture. And the presence of Selena as a full-fledged main character completely unwinds such an old worldly problem as the relationship of fathers and children (mothers and daughters in our case), which grows into a clash of two psychological and independent quantities. And here you can not try to restrain yourself, but a lump approaching the throat will strangle more and more.
As for Stephen King, he has long been labeled the “king of horrors,” if you will, and the author of the review is often embarrassed to hear this phrase when the following names are born in his head: “Body,” “Shawshank Escape,” “Help Student,” and even the recent “Joyland,” “Mr. Mercedes,” and the “Dolores Claiborne” in question. All these works are fully proof of the fact that King successfully plays on the feelings of his readers, giving emotionally strong dramatic plots. And this leads to the conclusion: Stephen Edwin King is a master of all trades.
It may be a shame, but this film is unpopular, and little known to the general public. But for moviegoers, it's a real gift. In this film, there is nothing supernatural, nothing that can attract the average viewer. The picture shows the life of a very strong and persistent woman. Many are frightened by the simplicity of the plot. For this reason, the film was left without proper attention of the general public. The story is as old as the world, but after watching, there is a storm of emotions, and food for the mind.
The film is based on Stephen King’s novel Dolores Claiborne, which I read not too long ago, and it amazed me. Its atmosphere, great characters, a lot of details, and of course the drama of the work itself. I was very happy when I found out there was a movie. It was a bit scary, I was afraid to be disappointed in the film. After all, the atmosphere of King's novels, manages to film very few. Most directors simply cannot convey the style of the writer. But, I decided to look, and was delighted with this picture.
The characters in the film are amazing. Katie Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who played a masterful role, showed all the pain, experiences they had to go through and are experiencing at the moment. Like mother and daughter, they looked very organic and natural. It was very interesting to watch the development of characters who did not cease to demonstrate their acting skills.
Bravo Taylor Hackford, who managed to transport us to King's Backwoods in Maine. After all, readers know that King is damn good at creating such stories, about the relationships of different people, in small towns or backwaters. It is often there that terrible things happen that no one knows about. The director managed to convey the tragic and atmospheric nature of the novel, for which he was very grateful. But it's not just his fault. Screenwriter Tony Gilroy perfectly adapted the novel as a script for the film. I especially like flashbacks, which sometimes take us back to the past.
In the end, I want to say that the film is great. God forbid, go through all that the main character and her daughter experienced. Such films are very much in the soul. It's all very real. There is no need for monsters or supernatural beings to be feared. It is enough to show the lives of people who live in hell every day, suffer a lot of pain. It’s all real, it’s life as it is. Such destinies, in our world enough with prosperity, and it is sad, sometimes people do not deserve this, but have to live for the future of children. Dolores managed to remain a strong and principled woman, despite all the humiliations she endured. But at the same time, she is a loving and caring mother. Sometimes being a bitch is the only way to protect a woman. I highly recommend the film to all King fans, as well as connoisseurs, for a really good movie. I do not recommend avengers and afterburners. But for those who love a soulful, instructive film. And I'm putting this movie on.
9 out of 10
Stephen King's books are designed to make films on them, in which interiors and landscapes seem to swallow, snatch people, keeping them in the grip, sometimes for decades. Dolores Claiborne, perhaps, evokes the feeling that few people know how to do it. And, of course, it does not matter whether the interiors are rich or poor, whether the landscapes are scarce or captivating. Mother and daughter ride on a boat, but neither one nor the other enjoys the views; and the house of wealthy gentlemen, so slick and frowning, palpably acquires sinister features that relate it almost to the King’s hotel from the Shining. Because before our eyes, even sheets and other crispy, snow-white underwear turns into a torture tool - because the fastidious hostess prefers fabrics that dry out in the most inaccessible places.
Despite the fact that there is no grain of mysticism or fiction, but the plot web is so suitable to become the visual side of the film that the film will yield to a rare good-quality mystical or fantastic thriller by the illusion of touching something beyond. Eclipse here is a milestone, a symbol - and at the same time causes not otherworldly demons. To the local drama can, of course, be nitpicking: why the heroine does not immediately go to the police, instead of being a hero, why everyone is only worse? Her husband's actions are not enough for one corner, are they? But this can be attributed to the era or dishonesty of the police – after all, in each place there are their own unspoken rules, and residents usually know in what cases they can rely only on themselves. Moreover, the behavior of bank employees is extremely puzzling. Now, I want to believe, it is indisputable that in family matters, banks should be much more pedantic about documents.
In any case, the embodiment of the family history does not cause complaints. With jewelry precision, both ulcers and distortions of public consciousness are dissected here, and someone’s individual guilt. At first, the daughter seems to be very cruel to her mother, the same woman all previous years wanted only one thing - at least a couple of friendly words from her child. Her mother bares her soul before her, Selina makes fun of all her candor. But gradually the plot demonstrates the motives and motives of both heroines more clearly. And you know, there's those terrible voices in her ears of other kids from childhood accusing her mother of murder. This is not an excuse, but indeed society often makes people ashamed even of their relatives.
But the excursion into the most secret here does not stop, exploring all sorts of roots and stimuli more and more meticulously. And the reason is evident in the fact that “Dolores Claiborne” not only with remarkable resourcefulness joined the stream of film adaptations according to King, but also stands in the tried-and-tested tradition of some noirs and other films of the classical era of Hollywood with elements of psychoanalysis. In which it is enough to search for some forgotten memory, the root cause of mental disharmony. And in this case, such a reception can very much work. After all, Selina is a girl with a twisted childhood, camouflaging filthy memories of what her father made her go through, hiding them somewhere on the back of her mind.
The best adaptation of his works Stephen King believes, apparently, "Misery". But the fact that Katie Bates from there smoothly migrated here, this film only provides a special sharpness – a slightly different role, and to be honest, it is unclear why Katie here was not nominated for an Oscar. Who if not she fuses in her face a local enchanting expression with a strong everyday life? Coupled with an extremely reasonable and balanced ability to comprehend another person. I think the mother, even before asking her daughter about the presence of that gentleman, knows the difference between “nobody” and “a lot of none.” And the film, among other things, is nothing more than an ode to Dolores’ squirting hands, eulogies to her tormented fingers, praises of external power and equanimity at such internal anxieties and squalls.
The result is an excellent, unusually atmospheric film. "Dolores Claiborne", despite the criminal background, primarily about achieving understanding, forgiveness, consent, sincerity. And the theme of protection of civil rights and dignity, the need for social security is adjacent here with ineffable, intimate, sensitive chamberiness and filigree interpretations of characters and temperaments.
The postman, who usually brought the mail to Vera Donovan around 10 a.m., heard screaming and moaning coming from the house. Going inside, he saw Vera Donovan with a broken back and an ominously swung porcelain roller over her Dolores Claiborne - her housekeeper. Whether Dolores really attempted on Vera’s life will be established by the investigation... and Dolores’ own daughter, Selina.
Is there so much meaning in life, or to put it more accurately, the existence of Dolores Claiborne, the last twenty years serving as a servant in the house of an eccentric rich woman with bitchy views on life? Her fate is clearly not in the order in which she would like. Drinking husband, subsequently suspected of molesting minors, "dusty" work, bringing one pittance, as well as surprises presented by the husband every few years, like closing the wife's bank account and transferring all available funds to his pocket. And a broken relationship with her daughter, Selina, who sharpened her teeth on her mother after an accident with her father. No, Dolores' fate is clearly in the wrong direction.
During this period, the criminal investigation and persecution of Dolores by a local detective, who is a bastard, her daughter Selina comes to the town. Dolores has already come to terms with her fate, she is noticeably old and looks indifferent to any manifestations of intolerance in her direction, but Selina is not. After the incident with her father, Selina seriously changed, becoming a frenzied, partially drinking, hysterical lady with a whole host of psychological disorders.
Thus, the authors of the film lift the veil of real female cinema, with all the adversity of the weaker sex and, most terrible, with the most unpleasant and, unfortunately, the most frequent situations. But to say that Hackford’s film is heavy is to say that Stephen Edwin King is not for everyone. Eccentric to the degree of emotional throwing of the heroine Lee or straightforward in the face of the heroine Bates, of course. It’s not that hard at all.
However, it will not be possible to paint the film with bright colors due to his depressive mood. The past has never been so tangible for the heroes, so much so that they will stand up for a moment, reproducing the reality of an event fifteen years ago. And, to great joy, healing, placing all the dots above the i in the order in which they should have been placed those same - fifteen years ago. And, importantly, not in the company of a bottle of Black and White, but on the deck of the ferry, when the mother who sent her daughter home, actually wants to see her most in a difficult moment.
Hackford and King left a spark of hope for a bright future for mother and daughter. King gave his heroines what he was deprived of as a child when his father went to get cigarettes and never returned.
Sometimes being a bitch is the only way to protect a woman. (c)
That's right. So frequent are the problems of abuse in couples - humiliation and beatings by her husband, drunkenness, and hopelessness for his wife - all the charms of the patriarchal world. And here, of course, almost always raises the question of withdrawal from such relationships, divorce and separation. In Dolores’ case, as we can see, this could hardly lead to anything worthwhile: “He’ll find you everywhere.” A man short, mean, descended to the harassment of his own daughter. That was probably the only way out. In any case, without condemnation society would not do. Yes, heroine and still on this society. Her whole life, all the sufferings were put at the feet of her daughter – unloved work with not very pleasant working conditions for more than a decade, postponement of savings. Even murder. Getting rid of this nightmare.
A really strong story of a strong woman. As for the second case, Dolores' daughter at the very end said the very right thing - what, however much love and compassion might have made Dolores stay with such a man? Attachment. Mutual understanding. Yes, of course, mutual reproaches, teasing and not quite pleasant jokes, but still affection. Two strong women who understand each other.
And I have a deep sympathy for the main character for her courage and will.
You know why I love Dolores Claiborne? To the book. For a story that reads in one breath, for a bitter, heartbreaking story. You know why I love the book? To the movie. It was after seeing this picture that I wanted to read this masterpiece of King’s art.
I don’t want to be too nagging about this movie, I don’t want to denigrate it. It is both calm and smooth, on the other hand very dynamic and overplayed.
2 things I definitely liked:
1. The main thing in the film is his story. The story of a strong and courageous woman Dolores. Her fate is not easy. I admired her. Her tempered character. I was impressed by her resilience and humility with the future. Life has given her many challenges, but Dolores is not one who will fold his hands and lose heart. So the first plus I want to give to this strong woman.
2. Katie Bates. Well, that's not surprising. Favorite actress of the King of Horrors. He always chooses heroines for his novels that after no one and can not imagine in their place. Katie is not like a smear, a weak-willed, empty and lifeless woman. She managed to get into the role perfectly. Strong and strong-willed Katie, thank you.
Things I didn’t like:
1. Daughter Dolores. Sometimes I wish that character didn’t exist at all. An annoying, mentally unstable, negative and constantly overplaying persona. Her behavior with her mother bothered me and always caused the feeling of hitting Selena a lot and hurting.
2. No resemblance to a book. I understand that the film should not copy everything and it has its own individual features. But there are some details that the film is missing. Although most things were revealed very well.
3. The movie is boring. Sometimes it feels like it lasts forever. You get tired of being gray and monotonous.
4. The most anticipated end. Admittedly, many people knew how this would end. And it is not a plus when you already know about all the turns in advance.
I didn't mean to denigrate it, but the opposite happened. This film is well received because of the story itself. She was able to survive in the film, albeit tediously, albeit with difficulty, but managed to convey the plot.
Of course, one of King’s best non-fiction works was difficult to film. It is worth paying tribute to the creators. I love the novel very much. King has a phenomenal understanding of women, credit, I think, to himself with his supreme capacity for empathy, and his wife Tabitha, with whom they have been together since their early years.
Of course, again, it would not be very spectacular to put Dolores in a courtroom and string a string of flashbacks on her story. The authors boldly entered into the script daughter Dolores Selena on the rights of the second main character - and did it very skillfully, accurately showing the typical future of girls with whom a terrible misfortune occurred in childhood - a nervous, unhappy in her personal life, sitting on antidepressants woman with bullied eyes. It was probably a good move after all. Although Selena was made the only child of St. George, it did not affect the ideological content much.
But for the sake of Selena, they almost pushed Vera - and here they made an almost critical mistake. The line with the children of Vera, in the book is very bright, removed. Faith’s participation in the events of the eclipse, on the contrary, intensified. As a result, the harmony that made up the characters of Dolores and Vera in the book, somehow violated ... and if the book emotional intensity is focused on the relationship of these two women, almost equal in the overall count (at first, Vera was Dolores’s employer, as it were the “senior”, but then Dolores took care of her, taking the role of “older” on herself), then in the film the main line was made “mother-daughter”.
So Selena’s statement, that her mother and Vera loved each other very much, looks damn strange, taken from the ceiling. They never had a particular “outer” intimacy: “I don’t think she was attached to me,” Dolores says at the beginning of his story. They were never friends (love, common interests, joint leisure), their relationship is much more unusual, outwardly always remote (mistress-servant, sick nurse), and internally very intense, but rather as a rivalry, they are kind of “faithful enemies”, like d’Artagnan and Rochefort or Weims and Vetiinari. They admired each other, helped each other, but were not friends.
In general, Selena’s performance towards the end of the film looks very unconvincing, once, and presents Dolores as a passive object of what is happening. In the book, it was Dolores who took and proved her innocence, boldly and even brazenly, in the film she rather gave up. Thus, the work added a new meaning, we showed Dolores as a criminal and a victim at the same time, in the book she was never psychologically as a victim, she was always an active beginning.
Again, some melodramatic role of the eternal hound was given to the investigator, who in the book participated only in the events of the eclipse. And again, Dolores from the book cut him under a nut, and then she again appeared as a persecuted victim for many years, the stubborn cop, who never opposed him. Katie Bates played well, but not the woman who said, "Well, I'll take what I'm supposed to do and grit my teeth so that smile comes off like it always does."
Accordingly, the gender-oriented message of the work shifted from “women, you are a person, fight for yourself and your children” to “poor women, how hard it is for you in this terrible male world.”
There is again a nuance that if in the book Dolores honestly came to court, honestly told everything and honestly won the case, thereby putting a bold point at a certain stage of his life, then he and his daughter, in general, “discarded”, as they say, and the devil knows whether the persistent investigator will still be able to triumph.
In general, read the book (and in translation is already, unfortunately, gone from us IG Gurova, one of the best translators King, still Soviet school). The movie won't replace her.
There is a huge difference between the story and the story itself. The narrative is respectable and trustworthy, the plot is a slippery type, which is better kept under house arrest. S. King, How to Write Books
“Dolores Claiborne” is the rare case when the style and syllable of a fictional publication is almost impossible to convey and somehow successfully interpret in a film without completely changing the process of filing the plot of the work. And it should be noted that Tony Gilroy, who worked on the script, coped with a strong four, despite a certain cut, completing the final reconciliation of the heroes of the work. To blame him for this is pointless, because the justified image of the heroine demanded by the audience is hatched through the hysterical excesses of the finale, besides, this technique helps to reveal the motivations of some characters. Due to this, the film slightly depreciates and acquires shades of stamped work, but the finale does not spoil the impression of the process worked out and the clumsy happy-end narrative returns us to the necessity of a certain conclusion, and, if you like, an epilogue.
The history of the emergence of the picture temptingly asks to appear, because it is as vital and trembling as, in fact, the work itself. In 1992, Mr. Stephen King, inspired by the portrayal of Katie Bates' character in the 1990 film adaptation of Misery, seized on her charisma of a provincially limited but not devoid of wisdom and life experience. The prototype of the character was chosen magnificently, the author neatly brought to the fore the successful opposites of her psychological portrait, retouching the nuances of the physical forms of the heroine, bringing the clumsy, almost decrepit in its puffiness character to the fore, not forgetting to give him nobility and a keen sense of intransigence to the unfair exploitation of human relationships transmitted through a lot of adversity that fell on the heroine’s head. After three years and a lot of intricate financial corridors of the film industry, a project of the same name was launched at Castle Rock Studios. And then the carrier of charisma transferred on the pages of the book joined him - and Katie did not pump up. What you read from the novel is supported by the most powerful experience of her character on the screen.
Getting acquainted with the picture, you experience something like deja vu. The viewer expects textually experienced sensations, fixed now on the video. However, “emerging” from the story of this nondescript, average American woman working as a maid for an old aristocratic bitch, one cannot but note speculation, a grotesque exaggeration of the motivations of the characters’ actions (particularly noteworthy is the fragment with Dolores’ conviction of the effectiveness of the method of violent solution to the problem by Vera – her employer and, in fact, the inspirer of murder). Dolores Claiborne herself is good because, emphasizing the tradition of the characters in King’s books, she personifies her own justice, unfortunately, poorly conveyed in the film. Its justice is justice of a private character, which is sewn into each person, which determines his own choice. Transferring this choice, as well as the experience of its effect on his characters, Stephen King deservedly carries the honorary status of the king of horrors (after all, looking deep into himself, as a rule, the gaze tends to unconscious impulses of the terrible and inexplicable I). The rest of the story’s characters also highlight their justice, also with aptly hypertrophied allegorical images inscribed in the script: a daughter (successfully selected by Jennifer Jason Lee), experiencing humiliation from her own editor-in-chief, exchanging the distribution of responsibility for articles in a purely personal way of bed-right to authorship; you can not ignore the inspector (Christopher Plummer), who denies years of oblivion and wants to stubbornly and rather inactically prove her vision of what is happening, supporting him with speculative arguments for the sake of successful crimes.
The picture deftly highlights the psychological background of the characters due to the emphasis on the visual range. The squalor and neglect of Dolores’ house, after her daughter left home and Dolores began to live in Vera’s house, presents the naked lonely heart of a despised, bullied woman who has earned a reputation among fellow soldiers as a husband-killer. Of course, this was the case, but the conditioning revealed in the work makes Dolores more a hostage of a situation that somehow has no right to make a mistake in his own home before his own children. The relevance of the work paves the way to the individual and is reflected in the form of a metaphor for universal social adaptation, compulsion becomes hostages of ethical views and moral laws of a patriarchal society. Thus, a beaten woman becomes a symbol of masculinity, at the same time being an indicator of loyalty and submission, if she voluntarily tolerates such a partner, the gender accent in the fragment with the checkbook is also interesting. King, as always, exposes the tremors of human psychology, the contradictory nature of actions and the dependence of human existence on the ridiculous self-supporting arguments on which the backbone of human personality is built.
Well designed scenes with imaginary flashbacks based on the play of light and naturalistic presentation. Confession from the first person, permeating the book, in the picture is divided into the narrative of the heroine, intersecting with the drama of the other characters of the story, which brings a lot of originality regarding the presentation of material, in fact, due to which the film looks in one breath.
Faced with difficulties, sometimes seemingly unbearable, is destined for everyone. The sublime example of Dolores Claiborne and her daughter, rushing to the extremes between a solid confident existence and the outbursts of an alien dark, tormenting world of internal experiences and complexes, leads the viewer to the revelation of the basis of the theory of psychoanalysis that everything tolerable, everything not blurred, can be dissolved, but only by returning and emphasizing the problem. Running away from oneself leads only to reflective neuroticism. Dolores is an allegorical figure, living in every tolerant, sacrificing for the sake of others, and therefore a part of each of us. It is permeated with despair of loneliness and wisdom, thoughts about it make you turn around and stare intently at the hectic everyday life of years passed, analyze and recall the root causes of actions and become more experienced, wiser, seeing the prudence and apparent appearance of absurdity of actions, because we rarely do at the expense of ourselves, acting only in this way and not otherwise, in order to learn to reconcile with painful emotions and burdensome thoughts. So, paraphrasing the heroine of the film, we can say that sooner or later, but the bills will have to pay necessarily.
Dolores, what are you doing?
- Cleaning up what you've done here is what I'm doing. It's just a pigsty!
- Dolores, you are a suspect, not a maid.
8 out of 10
Dolores Claiborne is an American detective drama based on a 1995 novel by Stephen King. The film turned out to be strong and heavy, and when watching you experience tension and anxiety and very sorry for the main character of this story. The movie was good and I liked this movie. I read Stephen King’s book, and I believe that this adaptation turned out to be a worthy and well-reflected story of the novel by a great writer. We see the main character Dolores, who is accused of murdering a woman for whom she worked for many years. We see Dolores’ unhappy and hard life, and what happened in the past has been a dark spot for her life. The relationship with the daughter is broken, but they still love each other, but what the girl experienced as a child is terrible, and therefore her whole life was broken.
Before us is a strong and noteworthy drama that touches to the depths of our soul, and we see what a difficult life Dolores had and how fate tested it all the time for strength. Academy Award-winning actress Katie Bates is a wonderful American actress, who I really like, and in this drama she played chic: very emotional and sensual. She conveyed well what her character felt, which I felt very sorry for. There was so much pain and injustice in her eyes, and it will be difficult to forget the story of this heroine. I never really liked Jennifer Jason Lee, but she played well in this drama.
In this movie, the subject of incest is touched on, and it always causes shock and resentment, and the heroines of this story I am very sorry. We see their lives broken, and how they have embraced it and coped with it. The heart and soul of this film was without a doubt Katie Bates, and her performance touched me in this drama. “Dolores Claiborne” is a pure and deep drama that hides many terrible secrets, and this movie will be to the liking of those who love real and worthy, high-quality American dramas. I was impressed by this film and I appreciate it. Watch Dolores Claiborne and feel all the pain and despair that the poor heroine of this story went through.
After the success of the magnificent adaptation of Misery, it was difficult to imagine that Hollywood figures would bypass the work of Stephen King, where a woman was chosen as the main character, whose image was written off from the Academy Award winner Katie Bates. During the viewing, there are persistent associations and at the same time it is felt as viscous as an autumn morning book atmosphere. This journey, if you decide on it, to a remote provincial American town - an excursion into the difficult fate of one strong-spirited woman.
Unlike the literary original, which is one large monologue length of a book, the concept for the film is quite familiar. A young woman receives disturbing news about her mother, whom she has not seen for fifteen years. Arriving at a childhood home awakens secrets hidden all these years. If you consider that the book does not have a line with adult Selena, her character is very harmoniously inscribed in the history of her mother’s life. This is a truly mature and mature narrative about topics that are not customary to raise. Be prepared for the undisguised truth about hardship and violence in the family. And although the film turned out to be a third not as revealing as a novel, it is certainly one of the best dramatic stories about deceived expectations in his personal life. We are presented with twenty years from the life of a simple maid, which were reflected by deep scars not only on her palms, but also on her heart.
Surprisingly, this story is almost devoid of positive characters. The husband of the main character is a real vivid example of what a man and a husband should not be. This character evokes complete antipathy and is not at all surprised by the outcome of his miserable life. Young Selena is difficult to call exemplary and desirable woman. She subconsciously erased from her memory some of the events of her childhood, not the most pleasant, and a visit home will open these dark pages of the past, according to her mother. The main character herself, in the magnificent performance of Katie Bates, appears at the same time a very strong, and in her own way a vulnerable woman. Long years of hard work, abuse of her husband and detachment from her daughter turned her far from an angel. But this character amazingly places scene after scene to meet the ghosts of the past and dive into the modern storyline.
If you can say so, the film has a depressing effect on the mood, but only on the time of viewing and this, in this case, serves a deeper immersion in the described life story. This is a kind of horror, but only frighten here not with mythical creatures or dark corners of the living room, but with the dark side of all relationships between people, including marital ones. We have before us a very powerful drama about the kind of life some people don't choose and which most people would never wish for themselves.
8 out of 10
I am thrilled and shocked by this film. A very strong and soulful novel by Stephen King, and its adaptation is the same. Yes, the tape is different in places from the book, but at what level the actors play!! It's a masterpiece. And I want to start with Katie Bates - she is a great actress. You can even say "King" actress. Brilliantly playing in Misery and receiving a cherished statuette from the Academy for this role, Bates again showed her unsurpassed talent in a new adaptation of the novel by the master of horror and drama. Dolores is an unfortunate woman who gave her whole life to struggle, to struggle with herself, to fight injustice, and she remained loyal to Vera Donovan until the end of her life. Nothing could break Dolores Claiborne - nothing and nobody. Not a drunken husband who loved to beat her, not a strange and sometimes alien attitude towards her own daughter, not a strict and harmful Mrs. Donovan. Katie Bates embodied the same Dolores – iron, inflexible, but at the same time sentimental and sensitive, a woman who wants to find simple human happiness, and therefore she goes alone – one against the whole world.
The other masters of acting also want to praise. Jennifer Jason Lee believably and tensely played Selena, a girl who turned out to be a hostage of distrust of her mother, at heart blaming her for the death of her father. Christopher Plummer is a suspicious skeptic investigator who wants to put Dolores behind bars. A great game, of course.
And, of course, the style of Stephen King. This legendary writer holds in a thrilling whirlwind of passions and emotions from beginning to end. He lets us into the maze of souls and hearts of his heroes, revealing their dark and bright sides. We saw the sides of the heroine named Dolores Claiborne. No one has the right to insult her, and even more so, to scold and scold for something - she survived, despite misfortunes, to spite fate and enemies. The picture is stunning and impressive. Everyone should look at it – it has a deep meaning.
The most popular scripts are written by Stephen King. It may be full of creative trash like 'Mgly' and 'Children of corn' but such are the costs of fascination with quantity, not quality. Waste happens, but real masterpieces also become more noticeable. So 'Dolores Claiborn' like 'The Shawshank Escape' or 'Misery' are genuine pearls, not even King's favorite mysticism. A real melodramatic domestic thriller. Of course, the lion’s share of the success of the film is not brought by the screenwriter, but here it is beyond competition. Elfman may still be remembered, but Hackfort... However, with his task he coped, when daughter Dolores reached the end, I was horrified, grabbing my palm by the jaw, so as not to squeal. And not only the effect of the climax is brought to perfection - the bundle, all the interweaving of the plot, sudden impulses of behavior, etc. - just inimitable. To me, this is the best acting role of Katie Bates. And Ellen Moof revealed in its full glory.
The movie's overheated. And worst of all, you believe him. The picture shows the abominations and vices of the boundaries of humanity, just the diabolical darkness of everyone since adolescence, but you believe it. You believe that there is no place for kindness and dedication on earth. And only Dolores Claiborne can dispel this feeling. . .
Pregnant social workers please step away from screens. The rest are recommended to watch.
Why is it worth seeing this picture? Just because, if you haven’t already, you have a chance to refresh your chakras with well-made, time-tested story work.
The action takes place in such a swampy American Timutarakani that from only her dull appearance you want to cry, or go quietly to drink a viscar. And in this environment, the main character spent her whole life... Katie Bates, who played a courageous woman with a difficult fate, managed to convey all the nuances of the mental state of her heroine and her inner struggle. A simple hard-working straight, kind woman. Her image reminded me of the late heroines of Simone Signoret, with wide palms, sadness in the eyes and a rare smile of a child. A mother who is ready to do anything for her child, regardless of how others and even this child will react to it. This mother-daughter conflict is the basis of the film, and is resolved only at the very end of it.
The relationship between the mother and father of a teenage girl can only be briefly said: they are typical when a woman is extremely kind and blind in her love, and a man only considers her as a servant. This is the second storyline, it is no less tragic.
And the third plot, which, like pepper in a dish, changes the aftertaste from viewing, is the relationship between the hostess and the housekeeper, the endless running on the razor blade, which grows into the affection and love of two strong natures, despite the alleged distance and different social status. Personally, this line impressed me the most.
Well, so that the sophisticated viewer does not even think to be bored, he is also offered a bonus in the form of a sheriff hanging around the house, who tries to sprinkle salt on the wound of an already unhappy woman.
Modern, tragic, insightful. Drama in the full sense of the word.
This is the last time you hit me. Next time, only one of us will survive.
Someone, and Stephen King with adaptations lucky. "Green Mile", "Escape from Shawshank", "The Shining", "Carrie" - this is not a complete list of successful adaptations of his novels (of course, here we must take into account a large number of failures, but most writers are lucky even less - not a single decent film adaptation in history!). So the novel about Dolores Claiborne, dedicated to the writer’s mother, received a worthy embodiment on the screen. Below I will try to justify why I consider Hackford’s work what is commonly called a masterpiece.
At first glance, the film contains many discrepancies with the original. I will list the most significant: two sons of Dolores are not mentioned - only the daughter of Selina; the appearance of the two heroines was changed places - Vera should be heavy (under 200 kg, if you follow the book), and Dolores - thin; Selina became a character of the first plan, although she should only flash in flashbacks; nothing is said about the madness of Vera Donovan.
And yet, despite all my dislike of first-source twisting, I don't blame writer Tony Gilroy at all. First, he left the main thing intact: the concept of the story "not from the beginning or from the end, but from the middle, gradually moving in both directions." Hence the impeccably constructed composition of the film. Second, by introducing Selina into the narrative and moving away from the book form of confession, Gilroy brought Dolores' story closer to Bergman's masterpieces, where the constant tense conflict between family members is the skeleton of the plot, and the dramatic-detective side is a kind of "muscle." Thirdly, the King’s style itself is preserved, it is a penetrating sense of horror, completely independent of the presence of mysticism in the plot. Violence in the family, pedophilia, incest - those things that once again remind: to be afraid of living people, sometimes even the closest, and not the nameless dead. It is King who is able to describe everyday horrors and mystical horrors equally impressive.
Various time plans are successfully emphasized by color: the retrospective unfolds in bright and warm colors, and the action in the present seems to be viewed through a bluish-blue filter. Scenes from the past are wedged invariably fine and beautiful, and in general, the installation is simply excellent. It is impossible not to praise and pleasant, “twilight” in the good sense of the word the soundtrack of Danny Elfman.
As for the actors, Katie Bates and Jennifer Jason Lee made up a wonderful screen duo: a stubborn, hardworking, determined mother who does not climb into her pocket after word, and a withdrawn, nervous daughter who finds solace in drinking and pills. Katie got used to the role so well that the discrepancy with the book Dolores seemed something insignificant. The third “whale,” Judy Parfitt, disliked me until the moment when it was the turn of a monologue about the accident, the unfortunate woman’s best friend. After that, I realized that the best from the film and want nothing.
The only thing I can regret after watching Dolores Claiborne is that I should have seen it a couple of years earlier, without putting it off.
Sometimes you have to be a bit of a bitch to survive.
“Dolores Claiborne” was for me a real discovery of the deep dramatic talent of Katie Bates, whose heroine tells her story in a simple and accessible way, without flirting or flirting.
Faithfully, at the age of 20, Dolores Claiborne served Vera Donnovan, an absolutely lonely woman; a complex, tough and cynical woman, but as is often the case, wise and profound. When Vera dies, Dolores is accused of her murder. After years of silence, her daughter Selena returns to the city. To understand what happened, she needs to figure out herself, go back to her childhood and resurrect all the things that she tried to forget all the years ago.
To describe Katie Bates' game is boring and ungrateful. You need to see that. Bates is an actress who lives the role. Not to believe and not to empathize with her is not possible. A separate admiration is caused by the tear with which Jennifer Jason Lee plays - the daughter of Dolores, a girl with a broken fate and a foggy future.
Magnificent field shooting in exaggerated-dark tones only heat up the feeling of doom that causes the plot of the film and its characters. An episodic excursion into the events of past years is not a new technique in cinema, but in Dolores Claiborne it looks extremely appropriate and organic.
A stunning picture, permeated with drama and subtle psychologism of rare quality.
“Dolores Claiborne’s life has never been easy. However, most people on the island notice this immediately. Rough and purple-red hands, which became so from frost and hand washing, a hunched back, as if carrying all the burden of the world, and an extinct look expressing only fatigue. Dolores worked all her life in the house of Vera Donovan, a rare rich bitch who behaved monstrously towards Mrs. Claiborne. Although Dolores always wanted to be “Miss”, because she was very unlucky with her husband. I know that something terrible happened in Dolores’ life, that Selina, Mrs. Clayborne’s daughter, left our abode for a reason, that the Clayborne family has a secret, but any strong woman who fought for survival, herself and her daughters who knew pain, has secrets, right?
The 1995 psychological drama Dolores Claiborne is one of Stephen King’s best film adaptations. The film was directed by Taylor Hackford, and the screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who perfectly, albeit with minor changes, brought the literary work of Stephen King to the screen. This dark and very lifely film can be regularly reviewed, enjoying the brilliant game of Katie Bates, brilliantly reincarnated in Dolores, Jennifer Jason Lee, perfectly played the role of Selina, Christopher Plummer, brightly played John Mackie, Judy Parfitt and John C. Reilly.
The highest praise also deserves the work of the cameraman Gabriel Bernstein, who saturated the tape with suspense and symbolism, and composer Danny Elfman, who wrote a stunning soundtrack.
I recommend this tape to all connoisseurs of Stephen King’s work and fans of quality psychological dramas.
10 out of 10
This is probably my favorite film based on the books of the great Stephen King.
Dolores Claiborne is a film about domestic violence and how strong a woman can be and what she can do to keep her child safe.
The story is different in detail from the book. I love it when a movie is made entirely from a book, especially if the book is good. And in the case of Dolores Claiborne, almost everything was taken into account. Only details were not included in the film. For example, Dolores had three children in the book, Dolores tells her daughter everything in the film, and in the book she testifies at the police station. But despite these shortcomings, the film turned out great. I liked the plot. Dolores Claiborne is nothing, not a remarkable housewife. She has a husband and a daughter. Her husband is a harsh, rude alcoholic. Completely dissatisfied with his life. He loves his daughter like a father, but then he loves her like a father. Her daughter is a kind and loving girl of her parents. Diligent both at school and at home. Dolores discovers that her husband Joe is raping their daughter Selina. And she just doesn't know what to do, but her mistress Vera comes to her aid. And Dolores takes action. Interesting.
Acting. Katie Bates is a great actress. She has already played in another adaptation of Stephen King's book. And in that movie, she did just fine. Just like this one. The other actors were not lost on her background. Everyone played well.
Bottom line: a great movie about respecting a woman. The film also explores the topic of domestic violence. And I can safely say that the film deserves to take first place in my collection of the best adaptations of Stephen King’s books.
10 out of 10