This may not be your mother?s ?Mildred Pierce.? And it?s certainly not Joan Crawford?s.
But it is James M. Cain?s.
HBO?s new, 5 �-hour miniseries ? debuting tonight ? strips away all the film-noir shadows, murder-mystery subplots and studio-diva style that the 1945 classic added.
And returns it to what it was meant to be ? a serious, wrenching story of a mother who loves too much and the men she misunderstands and the adored daughter who so consistently lets her down.
?Mildred Pierce? is directed by Todd Haynes, which led some to expect a precise replica of the Michael Curtiz classic. After all, Haynes ? with 2002?s gorgeously stylized ?Far From Heaven? ? had already made one letter-perfect, old-style Hollywood melodrama.
What they didn?t know was that Haynes? inspiration here was the Cain novel, not the original black-and-white adaptation. And that he didn?t see anything melodramatic in it at all.
Haynes came out of late ?80s ultra-indie film, and was often pigeonholed as part of the new ?queer cinema.? It?s easy to see how some might assume his ?Mildred Pierce? would be simple camp, all big shoulder pads and Mommy Dearest winks.
Except Haynes has always been uninterested in that sort of fakery. Even his early, banned ?Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story? ? which re-enacted the singer?s life using Barbie dolls ? was serious in its examination of female suffering.
His ?Mildred Pierce? is also played straight. Star Kate Winslet is a human being here, not a silver-screen archetype. And she?s surrounded by an extraordinary realism, from the perfect ?30s costumes and music to the excellent supporting cast.
But this ?Mildred Pierce? is still just as entertaining as the old. And it?s welcome proof that HBO?s long-form dramas don?t need gangsters to hold an audience?s attention.
The original film felt obliged to graft on a murder mystery ? after all, during the ?30s the James M. Cain brand had come to stand for noir best-sellers like ?Double Indemnity? (filmed in 1944) and ?The Postman Always Rings Twice? (which would reach the screen in 1946).
So Warner Bros. bracketed their story with a puzzler ? who killed playboy Monty Beragon? ? and let Cain?s original story play in flashback.
Haynes? screenplay (co-written with Jon Raymond, whose sad fiction previously inspired ?Wendy and Lucy?), however, strips off those crime-and-punishment additions to concentrate on what Cain was really interested in ? the characters.
Mildred is a great one, too. A capable, middle-class housewife, she?s nonetheless been buffeted about by the Depression ? and is growing weary of her cheating, out-of-work husband.
So, impulsively, Mildred kicks him out, and devotes herself to one great and endlessly frustrating quest ? to make enough money, and rise high enough in society, to win the love of her difficult daughter, Veda.
Mildred is a fascinating character ? and has been since the novel was first published in 1941. For one thing, she has coldly monetary ambitions. (She turns a recipe for pies into a chain of restaurants.) For another, she has a healthy sex drive. Those qualities make her seem incredibly modern, even today.
Yet Mildred is also, possibly, the worst judge of character you?ll ever meet. She thinks her husband is a loser. (But actually, he?s rather kind.) She assumes his best friend Wally is a dope. (But he?s really dangerously clever.) She dotes slavishly on Veda ? the original, sharper-than-a-serpent?s-tooth brat. Mildred gets everybody wrong.
It?s the conflict between her cool intelligence and emotional idiocy that makes her fascinating, and Kate Winslet seizes upon it, bravely exposing every human flaw.
The first ?Mildred Pierce? was meant to sell a lot of tickets and finally win Joan Crawford an Oscar. It did both, while permanently establishing the star?s image as the street-smart yet suffering martyr ? a masochistic archetype she would exploit to the end.
This version, though, is willing to see Mildred as not a persona but a person, marked (and hemmed in) by her own pride and neediness. Her own lust, too ? Winslet, never shy on screen, brings a naked heat to her scenes with Mildred?s lover, Guy Pearce?s elegantly played Monty.
Monty is one of those useless ?30s playboys who doesn?t really look like Errol Flynn, but thinks he does ? and that?s his danger. From the moment he picks up poor Mildred and drives her to his beach house, his eyes (if not his intentions) hidden behind blonde tortoise-shell sunglasses, you know there?s trouble ahead.
But we also already know Mildred, and we know that she?s going to find some way to survive it.
Haynes? version also brings back a character completely cut from the earlier film, Mildred?s neighbor, Lucy. It?s a smart choice. In the book, Lucy serves as Mildred?s pragmatic opposite ? a woman with a common-sense approach to how men and women really get along.
As played by a (thankfully) restrained Melissa Leo, she?s a constant cool breeze in this heated drama, and a small relief in Mildred?s life ? a genuine female friend, the one person in her closed-in circle who isn?t trying to get something on the cheap.
That?s nothing you can say about Veda. In the first film, which covered a shorter span of time, we met Mildred?s firstborn as a teenager; in this one, we first see her at 11, and watch her grow up, as she pursues her dream of a career in classical music.
It?s not a pretty sight.
Veda is beautiful, especially as played as a teen by Evan Rachel Wood ? all alabaster limbs and vermilion hair, she?s as pretty as a painted statue. But she?s got as much warmth as one, too, and it is Mildred?s tragedy that she will put all of her love in so unworthy a vessel.
Wood is terrific, as is Winslet, and Pearce and Leo and Brian O?Byrne as Mildred?s ex. But apart from Winslet ? whose complex, vulnerable and occasionally infuriating Mildred is already pretty much a lock for an Emmy ? there are two other real stars in this movie.
The first is Haynes? calm, rock-steady direction and attention to specifics. The clothes ? all in the drab, faded neutrals of the early ?30s ? are perfect. The music is spot on, as well, and the emphasis on details would have pleased Cain. (A former reporter, he always had readers finishing his books thinking they could now sell insurance, run a restaurant, or prosecute a murder case, too.)
The second great star here is the story itself. Before he was a reporter, Cain was the son of an opera-singer mother. He knew what that life was like. He also knew just how sexy and exciting and trashy the world could be. His characters are calculating and impetuous, driven and dirty.
And that?s here, too, for the first time. This Mildred isn?t a woman Joan Crawford could have played in Hollywood?s Golden Age. She?s not a woman most actresses would play now. She uses men and is used, she slaps her daughter around and endures her child?s abuse. She is ridiculous and tragic, impossible and real. She?s alive.
And so?s her movie.
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