John Adams Review

Even as much as I enjoy reading and learning about American history, I've always had a tendency to favor eras which are closer to the 20th and 21st Centuries to, obviously, the detriment of other time periods, such as Colonial and post-Revolutionary War America.

 Part of the blame for this falls on the way in which American history has been traditionally presented in most classrooms even since before I attended public schools here in the 1970s and '80s.  We students were often given very generalized overviews of Important Events and given lists of Great Names and/or Important Concepts to memorize but never really given any insights into the almost mythical Founding Fathers who to us seemed to be all-knowing and forward-looking, yet made of marble.

Another reason of my cherry-picking habits regarding my studies of American history is that I tend to focus on military history rather than the more mundane bits, such as the Panic of 1837 or the ramifications of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.  Like many men (and quite a few women), I find stories of courage under fire and the deeds (and misdeeds) of America's citizen-soldiers to be fascinating.  Hence, if given a choice between reading Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers or David McCullough's John Adams, I'm more likely to choose the first one, even though McCullough is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and quite a master wordsmith.

As in the case of HBO's 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers, I had to wait till John Adams, a seven-part television adaptation of McCullough's prize-winning biography of one of the Founding Fathers, became available on DVD.

Produced in part by Tom Hanks  John Adams is the biography of the Boston lawyer who successfully defended the British soldiers accused of murder during the Boston Massacre of 1770, became involved in the independence movement at the start of the American Revolution, helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was a diplomatic representative of the U.S. in Europe both during the war and after, eventually becoming George Washington's vice president and, finally, America's second President.

Starring Paul Giamatti (Sideways The Nanny Diaries), as Adams and Laura Linney (The Nanny Diaries, The Other Man) as his wife Abigail, the series covers pivotal events in the first half-century of the young American nation as seen through the eyes of Adams, a brilliant, vain and sometimes arrogant man who nevertheless helped the cause of America's independence in various ways and, as President of the United States, was able to avoid an unnecessary all-out war with France even though it cost him a second term in the then-new White House.

The miniseries, written by Kirk Ellis and based on McCollough's best-selling book, also examines Adams' personal life, particularly his close relationship with the self-educated and equally intelligent Abigail, and his perhaps not-so-successful ones with his children, particularly with his sons John Quincy, Charles and Thomas (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Kevin Trainor, Samuel Barnett) and daughter Abigail "Nabby" (Sarah Polley).

John Adams delves particularly into how Adams, a temperamental man who often felt a need to show off his intellectual prowess,.relied upon Abigail's steadying influence to help him overcome his self-admitted flaws of vanity and impatience with people who didn't agree with him.  Linney convincingly plays Mrs. Adams from age 25 to her late years as a loving but ahead-of-her-time wife who believes in her husband's abilities but stands up to him when she knows he's wrong or needs to be pushed in a certain direction.

Adams' sometimes stormy relationship with some of the other Founders is also examined, especially his "apprenticeship" in diplomacy under Benjamin Franklin (Tom Wilkinson) and the political estrangement with his best friend, Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane).

As it did with Band of Brothers, HBO Films and its production partners, including Playtone, lavished a great deal of attention to detail and historical accuracy.  Shot in location in Hungary (doubling for various European cities, including Paris and London) and the United States, John Adams was produced with a mix of traditional live action photography, the use of elaborate and accuate period costumes, hundreds of extras, as well as judiicious use of computer generated imagery to bring the late 18th and early 19th Century to life on the screen.

My Viewpoint:  Frankly, because I knew that Adams was more of an intellectual Founding Father than a more action-oriented leader along the lines of George Washington, I had mixed feelings when I was allowed to borrow the DVD set by my friend Ivan.  While military affairs and espionage intrigue me, politics and the dirty games politicians often play do not, and I greatly feared that John Adams would simply be a talk-fest full of posturing men in 18th Century costumes, reciting polite but snippy remarks at each other during debates.

And to some extent, there is some of that here, but it's not presented in a boring manner.  The acting, particularly by Giamatti and Linney, is wonderful, and the supporting cast is incredibly adroit at pulling the viewer into the story.  Particularly noteworthy is David Morse as George Washington, a man who, like Adams, was renowned for his fiery temper.  Here, Washington is only a supporting character and is usually depicted as being calm and composed...except in one scene where he really loses his temper after a particularly trying day with his Cabinet,

Even if you don't like American history - and after having gone through the public school system, I can't blame you - you're bound to like the humanizing aspects of John Adams and find out a great deal of just how incredible the story of America's early years really is.