Reviewed by Ria Bhatia ||
Every American high school English curriculum–both modern and dated–often seems tediously overrun with allegory. But, in my personal opinion, The Crucible is actually the exception that legitimizes the repetition of material–particularly where Nicholas Hytner’s 1996 film adaptation is concerned. Starring household names and 90s icons like Winona Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis, the film memorializes Miller’s highly personal take on McCarthyism. The winningly-biting, just-risky-enough political commentary somehow translates flawlessly on-screen: though the film initially focalizes the inevitable friction between oppressive-repressive Puritanical values and the ideations of one headstrong teenage girl, it quickly escalates beyond something Abigail can easily cover up by blackmailing the other children–who seem inordinately afraid of her. Winona Ryder’s naturally wide-eyed-classically-waifish features and childlike stature, coupled with her character’s disarming pull, originally suggests that her tantrums are nothing more than the symptoms of a passing fancy for a married man. However, these expectations are dynamically violated soon after being set up, thus taking the audience into the narrative. Instead of forcing a default or shallow portrayal of Abby, her surface-level spitefulness is built upon to reveal an impressive ability to code-switch, as well as her disturbing ulterior motives and her dexterity when manipulating men decades older than her into buying a certain version of the truth. Abigail outshines everything and everyone else, even her own circumstances–she is the unlikely, yet larger-than-life villain whose personal vendettas and ominous magnetism are the death of not only individuals in Salem, but of the townspeople’s common decency and neighborly goodwill.
Somehow, though Abby’s desire to force John Proctor either back into her arms or into submission eclipse the town’s hysteria, her character development remains productive. She continues eliciting emotion from those watching–even as she becomes overconfident in accusing anyone who gets in the way of her dark agenda, it’s difficult not to admire the invention born out of unadulterated obsession in what is essentially real time. Though Abigail ultimately gives in to abject selfishness and abandons the town in a last-ditch effort to avoid prosecution, her singular, guiding unwillingness to lose and her shrewd instincts for self-preservation take root as lasting mental images at the film’s dramatic end, as does her teary confession to Proctor while he is in jail.
Proctor, on the other hand, is tasked with delivering some of the most memorable one-liners in the film–including but not limited to his sentiment that he’d rather cut off his hand than reach for Abby again (a line that is metal as hell, to be honest, and hard not to appreciate despite its empty absolutism). Towards the film’s end, Proctor’s character is afforded another defining moment when he ultimately chooses his name, and his legacy, over life. That pivotal scene–made all the more realistic by his teeth, which have begun rotting, in a manner that is perhaps emblematic of the greater moral decay at hand, highlights the painful humanity of a fallen antihero. The audience has now witnessed him straying from righteousness and betraying his wife, along with generally bringing destruction, albeit unwittingly, down onto Salem because of one indiscretion. Still, Proctor is as impossible to hate as Abigail. His failings–and the subsequent accountability taken for them–make him easy to actively root for without judgment and even paint him as a figure worth emulating, to the point where the audience feels pretty compelled to look away from the film’s final scene, before his neck breaks (which, spoiler alert, is not pictured anyway).
Besides the striking characters and their respective motivations, the film’s opening is also pretty riveting, as it features a bacchanalian almost-orgy, occult influences, and a general sense of impending doom. To that end, Hytner’s version of The Crucible is punchy, realistic, and inspired–right down to the liberties taken by both the director and the actors–and it involves everything from sexual politics to mostly convincing period accents to historical significance. These particular features make it so that it’s probably among the least-hated pieces of literature that young people consume as part of a high school curriculum, which, in the currency of today’s adolescents, is a statement nearly as powerful as those made by the film itself.
