Review of John Adams

I'm clearly in the minority on this, but as much as I wanted to like this series, I just couldn't. It turned me off so much, in fact, I couldn't even finish it. The Adams in the HBO series just isn't the Adams I've come to know in McCullough's book, the Adams/Jefferson letters, and John/Abigail letters. Some of it is there, certainly, but Giamatti's performance is uniformly petulant, irritable, and whiny. I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's criticism of Katherine Hepburn: "She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B." Adams certainly could be all three, but was clearly so much more—a more vital, gravitational personality—and you'll never see it—indeed, get even a glimpse of it—in HBO's John Adams. While in an obviously frothier vein, Bill Daniels' forceful portrayal of Adams in the film adaptation of the musical 1776 is far truer to the man described in the book and letters. He, at least, could convincingly be the Adams described by his peers and the match for Abigail, which was never the case for me with Giamatti's shrinking whiner. When he is supposed to be forceful, he merely comes off as a brat. At no point during the HBO series could I bring myself to believe that it was Giamatti's Adams that the other characters were talking about. He simply wasn't believable to me, to the extent that I simply couldn't watch him anymore. I had to retrieve the book and letters from my bookshelf to cleanse my palate and revisit the man of his words.

Which is a criticism I have of the writing itself. Such work in a supposedly epic telling, and yet again I find a much more understandable presentation of Adams in the film 1776 than in four hours (so far) of HBO's production. After four episodes I still couldn't perceive a coherent philosophy, and challenge anyone watching it cold to produce one. The production spent far too much time on the minutiae of moments at the expense of a clear depiction of the man himself. Ultimately it was all about emotions—and again, only a couple of them—rather than thoughts. But then this is modern Hollywood's obsession—excessive but ultimately superficial verisimilitude—which is why its characterizations pale in comparison to the best of the past.

The same problem extends to the production itself. There is a fanatical attention to detail, including superb visual and special effects, but once again at the expense of the story. Rather than simply putting a camera on an actor and letting him act, Adams' director Tom Hooper, like so many of his peers, feels he must "put us in the moment" with hand-held camera work and oblique camera angles, or create an interesting canvas through off-center compositions and muted colors. All he does instead is distract the viewer and draw attention to himself instead of the characters. Oh but for the chance to lock the present generation of directors in a room playing Ford, Huston, Hawks, and Wyler movies non-stop until they finally learn what they clearly never have about storytelling.

I am happy, actually, that so many have enjoyed this series so much, but it's more than disappointing—aggravating—that the John Adams they're given is such a feral dog compared to the force of nature and penetrating mind, vain, stubborn, and obnoxious as it is, that comes through his letters.