REVIEW: Rebel in the Rye

Directed by Danny Strong
2017 Biography
2 hours, 31 minutes
From IFC Films

Starring
Nicholas Hoult
Kevin Spacey
Sarah Paulson
Victor Garber
Hope Davis
Zoey Deutch
Lucy Boynton

For those who love biographies and more specifically bios of writers and with an added dash of a fine period feel, this is the film for you.  It was certainly the film for me.  

The focus here, of course, is the early life story of the celebrated but seriously reclusive American writer, J. D. Salinger.  We see  how he lived as he came to write Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, after years of fooling around with it.  The story became the adolescent handbook on angst, alienation and loss of innocence.  It introduced one of the most famous fictional characters in American literary history, Holden Caulfield, one that so impressed Salinger's teacher, Whit Burnett, that he encouraged Salinger to make him a running character in several novels.  But Catcher in the Rye would be the only novel Salinger would ever write.  The movie is about why that is.

We meet Jerome David Salinger as a late teen with a father who demeans him at every turn, a mother who supports him no matter what and a snooty older sister.  There's a lot unresolved in his head and he has a great deal of anger, an umbrella definition for his apparent unresolved fear, frustration and hurt.  He wants to write but is not sure that he has the know-how, he signs up for a writing course.

Burnett mentors Salinger with much of it coming in the form of tough love.  The teacher believes in his student implicitly and seems to understand that Salinger needs to get out of his own way.  One of the absolute delights for me was listening to Burnett teaching his writing class.  It was the most delightful review for me from some of my own professors on the same subject.  Burnett is the first to have anything of Salinger's published.  Despite the fact that Salinger wrote only one novel, he was a writer of short stories.

Salinger, frustrated as usual with his writing, joins the army and it was a devastating experience.  He was not able to cope very well with the horrors he encountered and upon release, he clearly suffered from what today would be called PTSD.  He had recurring nightmares and began drinking.

As Catcher was nearing release, Salinger panicked over the publisher's request that he do publicity for the book.  He advised that he was simply incapable of doing that and was adamant about not discussing his work.  The book would have to stand on its own.

A year after Catcher was published, Salinger began practicing yoga and meditation and having personal instruction, if not a friendship, from a eastern religious guru.  He embraced Zen Buddhism for several years.  During this time he was advised to detach from human responsibilities, which was something he wanted to do anyway.  He bolted from parties, didn't accept praise well and  seemed to regard himself as a prisoner of  his unwanted fame.  He was often unkind to people who extended a hand.

As his fame became worldwide, there was no question that he had to withdraw.  He bought a large piece of land in Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1953 and lived there until his death in 2010 at age 91. His older life is not covered here.   

The film provided a wonderful sense of time and place and I expect most who see it will leave feeling they learned something about the mysterious writer.  On the other hand, there might have been more about the book itself.  People rave about it throughout but I don't recall any elaboration about why that is.

I've always liked Hoult although I haven't seen all of his films, several of which are just too silly for my tastes.  But of those I've seen, he turns in his richest performance to date here.  Salinger, of course, wouldn't have liked the performance or the film at all but he might have been pleased that they hired an actor this good-looking to play him.  Looks-wise Hoult pulled off the earlier scenes best.  In some of the later ones, I was reminded of DiCaprio doing a grizzled Howard Hughes in The Aviator, remembering the jarring feeling of the actor being too young for the part.

The film was more colorful in the scenes with Spacey in them.  It's not just that this actor is so much fun to watch and knows his way around a film set but this character is the most upbeat and good-humored in the whole story.  Paulson scored as Salinger's forthright literary agent and Garber and Davis aced it as the parents. 

To give the other side its due, Rebel in the Rye opened a film festival to some yawns and what reviews I have read basically found more fault than I did but agreed it might be a crowd-pleaser.  According to my favorite employee at my oft-attended art house, there has been brisk attendance and customers seem to come due to strong word of mouth and leave satisfied.  I was certainly among that crowd.

The real J. D. Salinger

Some may have a problem with the film's length at 151 minutes but not this blogger.  It was a straight-forward, honest, enriching look at the life of a complicated man.  It is co-written by director Strong (in his feature film debut) and Kenneth Stalwenski, based upon the latter's book, J.D. Salinger: A Life, which I loved.

I include Rebel in the Rye in the list of those writer biographies I love and I can't wait to own it.



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