East of Eden (1955)

Best movie of this year hands down!

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

In 1917, Monterey is a rough and tumble place. Cal Trask (James Dean)lives in the quiet neighboring farming community in the Salinas Valley. He doesn't get along with his father Adam (Raymond Massey). His brother Aron is the more liked especially by their father. He found out that his mother isn't dead but just left their family. He finds out that his mother is Kate (Jo Van Fleet) who runs a brothel in Monterey. He's a tortured soul who hates both his mother and his father but he's constantly trying to impress his father. Aron's girlfriend Abra (Julie Harris) grows more and more attracted to him. His father loses a lot of money when he tried to ship lettuce with ice on the train. He aims to recover the lost by growing beans for the war but he needs $5k which he borrows from a reluctant Kate.It's a massive performance from James Dean. He's all emotions and no reservation. He's throwing everything into his character. There is an undirected energy about him as he flail away for his father's approval. I try and can only envision a bland unremakeable film without James Dean. He makes this movie unique and he's not overpowered by the scale of this Steinbeck novel.

Growing up, I always heard the name James Dean linked to his performance in Rebel Without a Cause. It's more well known than East of Eden, but after watching both films, I can honestly say that Dean's performance in Eden is a more powerful performance. From the first moment Dean appears on screen, it's impossible to take your eyes off of him. Dean gives an amazing, layered performance as Cal Trask, a son looking for answers about the supposed death of his mother and longing for the approval of his father. In East of Eden, Dean is the original "Emo". He's brooding, angry, sad and haunting; sometimes all in the same scene. East of Eden is basically a tale of good versus evil. Cal being the evil and his brother Aron being the good. The parallels to the Bible's Caine and Abel are obviously apparent. Sibling rivalry in film is endlessly entertaining for me. Both of my parents have a sibling of the same sex. They often tell me (and my twin sister) about some of the struggles of growing up with a sibling of the same gender. East of Eden is also a beautifully shot film. There are a few scenes where the camera is tilted and off kilter. It helps to add a sense of discomfort and disorientation. My favorite scene is the one where Dean is on a swing and is having a conversation with his father. Dean only replies to his father while in the foreground. Also, the gentle swaying of the camera adds to the building tension. Probably my favorite shot from the film is where Cal has just left his brother with his mother, and stands out in the hallway. He casts a demented shadow on the floor that grows larger as he begins walking. Just good stuff. Without giving too much away, the most memorable scene is when Cal tries to give his father the money. The scene is so sad and chilling. Anybody who has ever been denied appreciation for an accomplishment from a parent, will probably be brought to tears. In the end, I think East of Eden has kind of gotten overshadowed by Rebel Without a Cause. Kind of like how Cal gets overshadowed by his brother. A pure must see classic indeed.

This is one of the many examples where the book is infinitely better than the movie. The director strayed way too far from the book. She left out so much of the plot and character development, if I hadn't read the book I would not understand what was going on.Let's start with the way the characters were interpreted. Cal seems like he has a bolt loose rather than him being evil which I found hard to digest. Aron is played very well and appears to be innocent like he should be up until the end where he goes crazy and smashes the window with his head which never happened in the book by the way. My favorite character in the book who I believe to be the most in depth and complex, Lee, wasn't even in there! In the novel Kate always looked young and beautiful and had a large scar on her forehead which was key to the allegorical parallelism in the book, however in the movie she had no scar and was very wrinkled.Perhaps the biggest disappointment in this movie is in the last scene where Adam is dying and he doesn't say the word "Timshel". The entire book leads up to this moment and is the overall message Steinbeck tries to convey and it's not in the movie. The good thing about this movie though, are the dramatic fight scenes were performed in such a way that it sounds like a joke so you can't help but laugh. I really don't like how the director interpreted the novel, maybe if I didn't read East Of Eden before hand, I might have actually liked the movie. so my advice is; if you've read the novel, don't watch the movie, it will most definitely ruin your day.

The film was a poorly directed and disappointing rendition of the novel and its moral.To be fair, one can only fit so much of such an extensive story into a movie, providing the director reasonable excuse to start so late into the novel, but also making him even more responsible for the fragment of the story he chose to recreate. The film in its entirety felt much like a roller coaster, having many interesting/exciting parts but lacking any real direction or focus. In relation to the novel, the film barely managed to show a connection, which was only achieved by loosely portraying major events and the characters themselves. The cast themselves, despite their valiant effort, either underacted or overacted, taking whatever moral or lesson the story might have possibly been connected to, and beating it even more, until it was barely recognizably, if existent at all. Throughout the film, the number of loose ends and spontaneous changes of depth in meaning was overwhelming, to the point of sight nausea. Significant scenes holding any philosophical value were also few and far between. To be fair, the film, when observed independent of its literary counterpart (if that relationship can even be established!) did maintain some level of intrigue, managing to keep me fairly interested and somewhat entertained. The actors also managed to retain some portion of the intensity and urgency ever so abundant in the novel, as well as maintain the personality of their personae.To conclude, the film missed the standard set by the novel so intricately written by Stienbeck. The bulk of my disappointment, which was immense to say the least, was the utter failure of the film to accurately portray the novel it was named after. Though decent as a film itself, it is sure to disappoint those who have rad the novel and enjoyed it in its entirety.