East of Eden (2005)

Based on a John Steinbeck novel, Elia Kazan's "East of Eden" stars James Dean as Cal, the son of entrepreneur Adam Trask. Cal feuds with his younger brother and father, both of whom perceive Cal to be "bad". Also deemed "bad" is Cal's mother, the owner of a local brothel.As Kazan has truncated Steinbeck's novel, each character's actions and motivations become slightly cartoonish. Adam himself is portrayed as a religious fundamentalist, so scarred by his now absent wife that he deems everything unsavoury to be a "mark of wickedness". Psychologically abused by his judgemental father, Cal embarks on an unhealthy quest to both find his mother and earn daddy's favour."East of Eden" is filled with artificial, exaggerated oppositions, trite melodrama and strained allusions to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. On the flip-side, it's beautifully shot, boasts amazing wide-screen photography and contains a number of interesting passages. Elevating things further is Dean's performance. Dean would act in only three films before dying at the age of 24 ("Giant", "East of Eden", "Rebel Without a Cause"). In each of these films, he played sensitive, troubled young men. These characters are outsiders, idealists, confused, ashamed and filled with a burning desire to belong. More than this, their on-screen suffering seemed to echo Dean's own off-screen troubles.Dean's performance in "East of Eden" has been called "groundbreaking", but it wasn't really. Brando and Montgomery Clift were already making waves as Method Acting Mega Stars, and Paul Newman and others would soon do so as well. What Dean did well was popularise a certain turn-of-the-century teenage archetype; all adolescent ache and emotional turbulence. And as Dean was immortalised as an adolescent and never allowed to grow up, his characters only seemed more doomed. As the years went by, his three performances would accumulate almost mythological proportions. This sentimental necrophilia would blind fans to Dean's flaws – his obvious attempts to mimic Brando, his overly mopey scenery-chewing etc – but in a way is also wholly deserved. "East of Eden" boasts gorgeous colour cinematography by Ted McCord, a lush score by Leonard Rosenman, and fine performances by Julie Harris and Jo Van Fleet.7.5/10 – See "Marjorie Morningstar", "Some Came Running" and "Rebel Without a Cause".

OK, the book is a masterpiece, very layered and beautifully and intelligently written with complex characters and plenty of emotional wallop. It is a very wordy and sometimes sprawling book as well as a long one, so when it comes to be adapted things will be missed out. The film may not the greatest of adaptations, it's not as complex, Kate and Aron are far more interesting in the book(Aron could be seen as the driving force and Kate is not a plot device) and there's the omission of Lee(the one that could be seen as the character who links everything together). Despite all that though, as a film on its own- which is a much fairer way to judge because book and film are two different mediums, there are plenty of films that are not good adaptations but are great films- East of Eden is still a great film and a powerful one too. With the only flaw for me being the occasionally heavy handed direction with an over-reliance of camera tilts, sure they are deliberate choices to show the character contrasts and how distorted the relationship with Cal and his father has become but there were parts where the technique technique wasn't needed like at the dinner table. Timothy Carey's voice not sounding like Timothy Carey is a touch jarring, but not enough to be a flaw. Kazan's direction is mostly fine though and East of Eden is a wonderfully-made film, sumptuous in colour and brilliantly shot(excepting a few of the tilted camera shots), especially in the poppy field which hasn't aged a jot and actually looks as though it was shot outdoors. Some of it is clever too like with Dean standing in the doorway, the shadow that you see very symbolic of how twisted and vengeful Cal is by this point. Leonard Rosenman's score is very lush-sounding with a very sophisticated vibe, enhancing the mood in every scene beautifully. East of Eden is very intelligently written if wordy like in the book and the story is still compelling and powerful, the ending and Cal giving his father the money and his father rejecting it are heart-breaking scenes. A lot of the details from the book may not be there but the spirit and the meaning of it are. The characters drive the film very well and are interesting, especially Cal who is a very tormented character who we do feel lots of empathy for. And the acting is great, Julie Harris may be too mature but her performance is still full of innocence and compassion, Burl Ives is a charming presence, Jo Van Fleet makes Kate very memorable and layered despite her quite short screen time, Raymond Massey is perfect as the at times controlling father and Richard Davalos' screen debut is a wonderful one, you hate him at first but in the climatic scene for instance you do feel empathy for him. But the best performance does come from James Dean who is superb and the emotional power of his performance really hit home with me. His role in Rebel Without a Cause may be more iconic(and for good reason) but his role as Cal is played with more depth I feel. Overall, as an adaptation East of Eden may not be great and will leave fans wanting but as a film it is truly excellent with a lot of powerful things. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This movie simplifies the book down to a plot of a troubled "teen" (James Dean a bit too old at 24) trying to win approval from an overly puritanical father.This boiled down story from Steinbeck's book is not particularly lame by Hollywood standards and stands on its own. Dean is decent in the role...Kate is simply a hard hooker not the demonic character in the book who burns her parents alive. However it disappoints because the book has such interesting characters like Kate and Lee. All the movie offers is some sort of dull coming of age thing.But how can a movie possibly cover a long novel?---it can't in fact when movies try to cover books too fully the result is always bad---with rapid untethered jarring snippets of dialogue and action from the book which if covered fully would take 50 hours of screen time.The German who is barely covered in the book gets much too big a role in this movie in some sort of Hollywood PC moral lesson...other than that I guess the biggest complaint is it is all rather boring.In the end Caleb wins his Dad's love when his Dad asks him to take the place of the nurse. Yawn...Do Not Recommend

As an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel, "East of Eden" falls short. The movie leaves out the first three parts of the novel (though this is forgivable, given the pacing issues that could arise in movie form), leaves out the character Lee, who introduces the concept of "timshel", and, as a result, ultimately ignores the moral message of the novel. The idea of "timshel", which is Hebrew for "thou mayest", is used by John Steinbeck to assert his message of free will as opposed to predestination; because the movie abandons this concept, all that is left is a story about the love triangle happening between Cal, Aron, and Abra. To one who hasn't read the novel, this plot line may be sufficient, but to one who has, the focus on this love triangle (which did not even occur in the novel; Abra and Cal did not show romantic interest in each other until after Aron had left to go to war) may bring disappointment.However, the portrayals of the characters that were not cut out were mostly accurate to the novel (Jo Van Fleet's performance as Kate was probably the closest to the original character), and the acting was not particularly bad, though there were scenes, such as the fight between Cal and Aron, where the acting was bad to the point of making the serious scene hilarious.I might recommend this if you're looking for a bad or cheesy movie to make fun of with your friends (the Cal and Aron fight is particularly amusing for this purpose). Overall, this movie is rather inaccurate to the source material and thus a sub-par adaptation.