THE CIDER HOUSE RULES

 

THREE STARS - Thought-provoking

 

 

       “Cider House Rules” is a case study in post modern morality.  Based on the novel by John Irving, the film leaves us ambivalent about its moral message but deeply affected by the people it portrays.  We want their lives to go well.  And yet the solutions presented leave us holding our breath for the inevitable consequences that their fluid morality will produce.

       Set within an isolated orphanage in rural Maine in 1943, the central characters of the film are an aging physician and his medical protegé, Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire).

       The physician, Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine), comes with the best of credentials, including a medical degree from Harvard,  but it is clear that he is struggling with a troubled soul.

       The child of alcoholic and parents, Dr. Larch attempts to redeem himself by doing “something useful” with his life.  As the director of St. Cloud’s Orphanage, he has created a haven of safety in an unsafe world, both for his own and for the abandoned children’s protection.

       However, his own soul is still not at peace.

       Struggling to be of help when young pregnant women come to him, Dr. Larch will either take their unwanted child into the orphanage and try to find an adoptive family, or he will perform illegal abortions.   It is as a part of this latter, clandestine operation that Homer becomes convinced that abortion is wrong as he is asked to dispose of the aborted babies’ bodies in the orphanage’s incinerator.  And it is at bedtime that Dr. Larch turns to the numbing power of the anesthetic “ether” to quiet his own mind and soul, becoming addicted to its solace.

       Homer Wells, on the other hand, is a man who has spent his entire life within the protective walls of the sanctuary created by Dr. Larch.  Having been adopted twice, once as an infant and returned the next day, and once as a toddler whom Dr. Larch had to rescue from abusive parents, Homer knows no other world.  By default, Homer becomes as an adopted son to Dr. Larch who pours his heart and mind into mentoring him.

       Teaching him the art of medicine, Homer becomes an accomplished obstetrical physician and surgeon.  But he does not have credentials beyond the walls of the orphanage and he longs for a larger life and world.  Thus when the beautiful Candy Kendall (Charlize Theron) is brought in by her dashing young boyfriend, Lt. Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd) to have an abortion, Homer decides to leave with them.  It is then that Homer experiences the joys and sorrows of the larger world, with the accompanying necessity for making the moral choices which define our souls.

       Needing a job, Homer accepts a position as an apple picker at Wally’s mother’s orchard when Wally is sent to war.  Bunking down in the Cider House along with the migrant workers, Homer experiences the sins and temptations of the world.

       The temptations come in the form of Wally’s girlfriend Candy.  Explaining that she “doesn’t do well alone,” Candy betrays her boyfriend and becomes intimate with Homer.

       Having stood in judgment over the men who had gotten the women pregnant while he worked with Dr. Larch, Homer now finds himself consumed with passion and understanding their deeds.  It is this event which both humanizes Homer as he comes to accept himself and others, but it is also the beginning of his post modern morality where there are no “rules” to obey, but only situations to remedy.

       The fact that Homer has adopted the situational morality of Dr. Larch becomes conclusive when he is faced with three situations: first, to perform the formally-appalling abortion; second, to cover-up the murder of his boss; and third, to impersonate a physician and take over as director of the orphanage.

       In the first situation, the boss of his migrant crew, Mr. Rose (Delroy Lindo) impregnates his teenage daughter, Rose (Erykah Badu).  Though at first outraged at the incest, Homer adopts Dr. Larch’s morality to simply “try to be of use” and aborts the baby.   The next day, when Rose stabs her father leaving him to die, Homer agrees to cover-up her deed and lie to the authorities.  And finally, when Dr. Larch overdoses on ether, Homer returns to the orphanage and accepts the deception Dr. Larch had perpetrated on the Board of Directors and impersonates a physician, complete with counterfeit credentials on the wall.

       What becomes of Homer’s life is left to our imagination.  What we do know is that this kind of behavior would be grounds for imprisonment today.  We can only wonder what his life and the other boys in the orphanage could have become if someone had actually modeled consistent and honest behavior before them.

              

(789 words)

 

 ________________