Most of my knowledge of American history comes from the musical 1776. Not that I didn’t study the subject in more traditional circumstances. From a year-long U.S. history course at my liberal-leaning New England prep school I gleaned two valuable nuggets of information: First, our government operates via checks and balances; second, back in Lincoln’s day, the Republicans were actually the good guys.
Had the textbooks portrayed our nation’s chronicle as a story, I might have retained more. Instead, the syllabus seemed an intimidating welter of independent facts and civic gravitas, and I forgot it all as soon as possible. By contrast, Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards’s musical, which I saw a decade later, was easy to understand and to remember, with its droll portrait of cranky, Machiavellian founding fathers, signing the Declaration of Independence in the fly-infested Philadelphia heat.
HBO’s glossy new series John Adams—premiering March 16, and airing in weekly installments through April 20-is less comic and more intellectual than 1776, and it doesn’t contain any show tunes. But if the first four episodes, released to reviewers, are anything to go by, the program’s strong narrative drive, fastidious direction, and deluxe production values make it almost as user-friendly as the 1969 musical.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography by David McCullough, the miniseries coaxes us to forget the American history that is confidently analyzed in high schools, and that we have come to take for granted. Instead, it presents the Revolution, and the new republic’s early years, as a bewildering whirlwind experienced by two anxious, conflicted individuals: a principled but ornery guy named John Adams (Paul Giamatti) and his self-disciplined bluestocking of a wife, Abigail (Laura Linney).
Director Tom Hooper sets his tone with the credit sequence: a sepia montage of early colonial flags, their vehement mottos—“Appeal to Heaven,” “Don’t Tread on Me”—still legible as the fabric ripples. Rattlesnake imagery, including a 1750s cartoon of a serpent whose chopped-up segments represent the disunited colonies, adds a note of menace. It seems downright improbable that the makers of these insignia could ever cooperate on the molding of a new nation. Meanwhile, the Celtic-tinged music by Rob Lane and Joseph Vitarelli becomes full-voiced and triumphant, but only after several plaintive early bars by a solitary instrument have suggested how lonely it can be to reject the status quo—to be an early adopter of insurrection.
If Adams was such an early adopter, it was only with great reluctance, this series argues. In Episode 1, braving the ire of outraged townspeople, he acts as defense attorney for the British soldiers accused of perpetrating the Boston Massacre. Later, he agrees to join the Continental Congress, but he looks doubtful about the mission—and he doesn’t cheer up much once he’s installed in Philadelphia, where his abrasive manner initially irks prospective allies. He becomes even more of a social misfit when he’s sent on a diplomatic mission to Europe, where the luxury and loose mores appall him. (Benjamin Franklin, playing chess in the bath, with a female aristocrat! Ick!)
In other words, John Adams proffers a very un-heroic version of its protagonist—one who always seems to be squelching doubts and distastes, repressing envy, and teetering on the edges of dilemmas. The casting of the superbly nebbishy Giamatti (Sideways, etc.), who looks like a scion of the Pillsbury Doughboy, and who always appears to be coping with a bad case of indigestion, reinforces this reading.
Abigail, by contrast, is a figure of unflinching gumption-as the filmmakers emphasize repeatedly, in scenes that strain to put the female experience center-stage. We see Abigail bravely tilling the fields, and Abigail bravely scrubbing the house. We see Abigail boldly instructing a doctor to inoculate her children against smallpox (squeamish viewers may need to shut their eyes during this graphic scene), and Abigail boldly advising John on his speeches. No sitting on the sidelines of history for this woman! As Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) observes to her at one point: “Your wisdom and your passion for your country is said to inform your husband’s every decision.”
In short, fans of Laura Linney are in for five weeks of bliss. Those of us who find this actress intensely annoying; who detect a showily virtuoso quality in her performances; and who suspect that she has reaped critical kudos largely by dint of eschewing mascara (recent Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton is another diva who’s had success with this eyelash-lite school of acting)—well, we’re out of luck.
Still, even Linney-phobes may melt a little during some of the scenes featuring John and Abigail together. In Episode 4, for instance, Abigail travels to France, where wife and husband reunite, after the long separation necessitated by Adams’s diplomatic postings. Embarrassed and tongue-tied at first, the spouses wander awkwardly through the enormous Parisian mansion that is their temporary home. The camera lingers on grandiose staircases and lofty Versailles-like rooms, playing up the drama of this meeting between the Old World and the New. (The series’s European sections were filmed in castles and other locations in Hungary.)
And then the couple finally reaches a bedroom, and they embrace, first tentatively, then with clumsy ardor. John’s wig falls off, unheeded. The moment is hugely moving, not only because it depicts the personal life of a historical celebrity (who ever thinks of John Adams having sex?), but because it’s an eloquent portrait of marriage as a combination of loyalty, passion, and friendship. A letter read in voiceover reveals that Adams’s preferred endearment for Abigail is “my friend.”
Of course, John Adams is jam-packed with veteran actors other than Giamatti and Linney. Tom Wilkinson brings a winning mischievousness to Franklin, an éminence grise whose social skills turn out to be far superior to Adams’s. “Do you not believe in saying what you think?” Adams demands at one point, during the Continental Congress machinations. “No, I’m very much against it,” Franklin answers breezily. Of course, it’s precisely through this kind of discretion that Franklin wins over the French, who provide critical support to fledgling America.
Other notable performances include Dillane’s reserved, patrician Jefferson; Danny Huston’s fiery Samuel Adams; and David Morse’s George Washington, a quiet, careful military man who looks nervous in civilian environments. Tom Hollander has a poignant cameo as King George III, who haltingly welcomes Ambassador Adams to England, once the American Revolution has been won.
This being HBO, the performers are set off by picturesque landscapes and period-appropriate décor, orchestrated by production designer Gemma Jackson and supervising art director David Crank. The Adams family’s first Massachusetts abode is starkly Puritan, free of rugs and clutter. A shipboard episode is drenched in gun smoke and ocean spray. Indoor scenes set in Holland recall the luminous paintings of Vermeer, and European gardens are regal with sculpted topiary. (According to HBO, the production required the use of 250,000 cobblestones; 1,500 wigs; 43 fake cannons, weighing 800 pounds each; and over 5,000 extras.)
But while HBO’s miniseries is a predictably luscious evocation of an era, it is most compelling as the story of a single married couple. That’s striking, because these days we seem to be at the tail end of a public obsession with the founding fathers. McCullough’s 2001 Adams biography was one of a spate of books on related topics: Joseph J. Ellis’s Founding Brothers, Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin, and Cokie Roberts’s Founding Mothers, just to name a few. Since many of these tomes happen to have been published after September 11, 2001, it’s easy to see them as a blast of nationalistic self-assertion, or as a kind of public soul-searching.
HBO’s John Adams invites us to identify with its characters in a very personal, subjective way. This John and Abigail live through a little exhilaration, and a whole lot of fear and angst—just as we all do, to a greater or lesser extent.
