I knew very little about The Cider House Rules. I knew who was in it and that it generated some controversy when it first came out due to there being something in it about abortion. That was about it. I do recall it was up for some awards, and that that sort of thing is what got a lot of people to complain about the abortion stuff. So, really, this movie could have been about anything even if a casual glance told me it had Tobey Maguire, Michael Caine, and Charlize Theron in some kind of period piece.
It’s also been on my HBO watchlist from before there was an HBO Max.
The movie opens with voiceover by Caine’s Dr. Wilbur Larch, a kindly doctor who runs a large orphanage in Maine. Caine’s rather unusual accent is about the only thing I can criticize about his performance, and he did get an Oscar for this one, so there’s that. He quickly recounts how he was a guardian to many children over the years but only really saw himself as a father to one. That would be Herman Wells (Maguire when he grows up), a boy who shows a lot of promise as a surgeon despite the fact the only real medical training he ever got was from Dr. Larch. Homer will assist Larch on births for desperate mothers who have nowhere else to go, but he’s not really interested in learning how to perform abortions, a medical service that Larch believes is sometimes required. Homer’s attitude on this is a little hard to pin down. He doesn’t necessarily come across as anti-abortion so much as he himself finds it distasteful and he won’t do it. Instead, Homer mostly dreams of some day leaving the orphanage and seeing, well, anything. He’s only ever seen one movie (King Kong) because the orphanage only has one, and he’s never really been off the grounds much that he can remember.
Then one day, Candy Kendall (Charlize Theron) and her boyfriend Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd) come to get an abortion, and on their way out, Homer decides to go with them. Wally, an affable for of fellow, is going off to the war (it is 1943 and Homer has, he’s told, a bad heart). It isn’t too hard to get Homer a job picking apples for Wally’s family in the fall and helping Candy’s dad catch lobster the rest of the year. He’s enjoying life, falls for Candy (and it’s mutual), and altogether is not all that anxious to return to the orphanage even as Dr. Larch writes him letters, urging him to come back and do the job Larch trained him to do.
Now, as a movie, this is a nice, clear story involving pleasant people (for the most part) just experiencing life. Homer is growing up and has to see more of the world before he will inevitably return to the orphanage and take over for Larch. Every scene with Larch after Homer moves out seems to show him arranging for Homer to take his place at some point in the future. And it’s not like Homer found the orphanage awful. He rather liked it there. He liked being able to deliver babies. He liked the other orphans there, and they adored him. He mostly just wants to see the world and not perform abortions no matter how much it might look like the appropriate course of action. In a different movie, Wally would be seen as some kind of a jerk or something, but it’s Paul Rudd, so his only fault is not being the main character. Weird accent aside, Caine is wonderful as he pretty much always is. Theron has the rather standard “cute girl” role, but she can handle it. If anything, I would imagine the only real issue someone could have with this movie would be the abortion talk that saturates much of the movie, and maybe a bit on how the only African Americans in the movie are treated as characters.
But at the same time, as beautiful as the movie looks, it also felt a bit hollow. Much of what happens here is the sort of “special person sees the world” sort of movie that could have just as easily describe Forrest Gump or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, only Homer doesn’t travel anywhere near as far as those guys do. In the end, when Homer has replaced Larch at the orphanage, with Candy staying with Wally out of a sense of obligation, he doesn’t seem to be too upset about it. Heck, he seems downright happy to be there, taking over the job he was groomed for and for so long resisted, or at least content. Maybe there’s a message there about how this was the best Homer could do, but he somehow has made peace with it? It’s not a bad ending, but it does suggest the characters may simply be going through the motions to get Homer back where he started, having seen enough of the world to get his heartbroken and back to the kids, none of whom seem to have aged much while he was gone. I liked this one, but at the same time, it sure did feel like there was a lot more that should have been there.
Grade: B
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