Michael Caine's performance is one of his best, and Charlize Theron is sweet and direct as the girl. Wilbur's and Homer's lives are complicated by the abortions Wilbur provides. Wilbur came to this work reluctantly, but is driven by having seen the horrors of back-alley operations. Homer, upon learning Wilbur's secret, considers it morally wrong.
Age rating
The first family felt Homer was too quiet (due to orphanage babies soon learning that crying is pointless). Dr. Larch is addicted to ether, and he secretly performs abortions. Conditions at the orphanage are sparse, but the children have love and respect, and they are like an extended family. Older children, such as Buster, look out for the younger children, and in particular care for those who are sickly, including Fuzzy Stone, who was born prematurely to an alcoholic mother. Fuzzy suffers from respiratory disease and thus spends most of his time beneath a plastic tent ventilated with a breathing apparatus.
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When Homer reads them the list, the workers observe the rules have been made without the occupants' consent by people who do not live there and do not share their problems. Homer and Candy become much closer during harvest and spend more time together while Wally is fighting in Burma. Homer Wells grows up at St. Cloud's, a Maine orphanage directed by avuncular Dr. Wilbur Larch.
Rating
However, in Ireland, the film was given the strictest possible rating, 18. The Cider House Rules was adapted as a film in 1999, with a screenplay by Irving. Directed by Lasse Hallström, it starred Michael Caine as Dr. Larch and a young Tobey Maguire as Homer Wells. The film, with Dr. Larch’s loving nightly valediction to the orphans, “Goodnight, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England,” earned Caine the second Academy Award of his career.
An author of course treasures all the episodes in his stories, and perhaps there was a tendency to keep in as much as possible, without marshaling it toward a payoff. The result is a film that plays like a Victorian serial-- David Copperfield, for example, which is read to the orphans--in which the ending must not come before the contracted number of installments has been delivered. Other critics have zeroed in on the movie's treatment of abortion.
Report: Actress Monica Potter says she lost role in ‘The Cider House Rules’ after refusing Harvey Weinstein’s - cleveland.com
Report: Actress Monica Potter says she lost role in ‘The Cider House Rules’ after refusing Harvey Weinstein’s.
Posted: Sat, 09 Feb 2019 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Film adaptation
As a young man, Homer befriends a young couple, Candy Kendall and Wally Worthington, who come to St. Cloud's for an abortion. Homer leaves the orphanage, and returns with them to Wally's family's orchard in Heart's Rock, near the Maine coast. Wally and Homer become best friends and Homer develops a secret love for Candy. Wally goes off to serve in the Second World War and his plane is shot down over Burma. He is declared missing by the military, but Homer and Candy both believe he is dead and move on with their lives, which includes beginning a romantic relationship. When Candy becomes pregnant, they go back to St. Cloud's Orphanage, where their son is born and named Angel.
But Homer does not agree with abortion, and he becomes involved with a well-to-do local family of apple growers and the migrant black workers who travel north to work their orchards each year. Dr. Larch implores Homer to help the helpless, saying, “Women are trapped. In dealing with the racism of the time, the novel’s title derives from a list of rules Homer posts in the Cider House.
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A subplot follows the character Melony, who grew up alongside Homer in the orphanage. After Homer leaves the orphanage, so does she in an effort to find him. She eventually becomes an electrician and takes a female lover, Lorna. Melony is stoic, who refuses to press charges against a man who brutally broke her nose and arm. She is the catalyst that transforms Homer from his comfortable, but not entirely admirable position, at the apple orchard into Dr. Larch's replacement. The Cider House Rules is a 1999 American drama film directed by Lasse Hallström from a screenplay by John Irving, based on Irving's 1985 novel of the same name.
Larch wants Homer to take over after Larch retires, but Homer feels it's impossible, as he lacks formal medical education and he wants to see the outside world beyond the orphanage. Candy and her boyfriend, Wally Worthington, a young couple who came to the clinic for an abortion. Wally's mother, Olive, owns the Worthington family apple orchard where Homer settles as a worker. He lives on the Worthington estate in Cider House, the bunkhouse. Homer is exempt from this as Dr. Larch has diagnosed him with a heart condition.
One of Irving’s most political and controversial novels, openly Dickensian in its broad scope, The Cider House Rules explores the contentious issue of abortion, as well as those of addiction, racism, and rejection. Dr. Wilbur Larch, trained as an obstetrician, is the ether-addicted and childless proprietor of the St. Cloud’s Orphanage in 1920s Maine. After many years witnessing unwanted children and deaths from backstreet abortions, Dr. Larch starts an illegal, and safe, abortion clinic at the orphanage.
Dr. Larch (Michael Caine), in charge of the orphanage, will provide abortions without question because, in the 1930s and 1940s, he wants to save young women from the coat-hook artists of the back alleys. He has taught Homer (Tobey Maguire), his protege, everything he knows about medicine, but Homer is opposed to abortion. "The Cider House Rules" tells the story of an orphan who is adopted by his own orphanage and reared by the doctor in charge--who sees him as a successor.
