Throwback Movie Night: The Crucible

This week's movie is the 1996 adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1950s play, "The Crucible". Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay for this adaptation and Winona Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis starred in this movie. I'm not a huge fan of this story. I can't stand to watch the girls go nuts about naming witches throughout Salem and the rest of the town taking their word for everything. Enough that the girls get completely drunk on their own power and start to believe they are actually seeing witches. It makes my head hurt. I remember seeing this movie back in high school and disliking it then, but decided to give it another shot. I wish I hadn't.

I think Tituba and John Proctor are the best characters. Tituba is clever enough to get herself out of immediate harm when Abigail Williams (played by Winona Ryder) initially tries to save her own ass by throwing Tituba, her uncle's slave, under the bus, so to speak. John Proctor is played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who seems to understand that the entire witch-hunt is led by Abigail Williams, who he had an affair with when she worked for him. Abigail is still in love with John Proctor and wants his wife dead so she can marry him. Meanwhile, Proctor is trying to repair his marriage. Of course, Abigail Williams targets Proctor's wife in the courts, calling her a witch and putting a target on her back. The thread gets more and more tangled as Proctor tries to prove that Abigail and the girls are lying. In the end, the girls' ruse overwhelms Salem and John Proctor himself is hanged as a witch, thereby making Abigail's giant witch hunt backfire completely.

As I said, I don't really like this movie or the story. It's too scary. People are very quick to judge and to watch a play showing the power that a handful of liars has is really too awful. Miller wrote the play based upon the research he did of the Salem witch trials after his friends in Hollywood were brought before the House Un-American Acvitivies Committee in 1952. His friend was scared of being blacklisted from Hollywood, so he began naming others for the committee to investigate. Miller, himself, was investigated in 1954 by the committee and was denied a passport to see his play open in London.

All in all, the movie is okay, I guess, but I just don't like the story.