It is rarely difficult to distinguish between a\u00a0John Steinbeck novel and a ray of sunshine. The new adaptation of his 1952 book East of Eden doesn\u2019t buck the trend and wastes no time plunging us into the murk. The opening scene follows a beaten, bloodied woman as she crawls across a muddy field towards the only house for miles around. Out of the house come two brothers. One rushes to rescue her. The other takes one look and announces: \u201cThis is a mistake.\u201d Brother,\u00a0you have no idea.<\/p>\n
The rescuer is Adam Trask (Christopher Abbott), the sceptic Charles (Mike Faist). Cut back 25 years to watch them being raised in misery in an\u00a0essentially motherless household by their monstrous father, Cyrus (Tracy Letts), a civil war veteran and ceaseless recounter of his heroics therein. Charles longs to follow in his footsteps. Adam is beaten\u00a0for his lack of aggressive instinct. But it is Adam\u00a0whom Cyrus sends to enlist and Charles he forces\u00a0to stay behind and work on the family farm. \u201cBecause,\u201d he says to Adam in a rare instance of paternal wisdom, \u201cthere are loose things in him that\u00a0should be reined down.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a resentment-fuelled Charles nearly kills Adam the night before he leaves for the army, you can see Cyrus\u2019s point. But years later, Dad is dead, leaving behind an almost certainly ill-gotten fortune. Adam comes home; the brothers put the past behind them and begin to carve out a decent life on the farm.<\/p>\n
And then comes Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh<\/a>), the battered, bloodied woman crawling across the field to\u00a0damn them all.<\/p>\n Evil just for kicks? \u2026 Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames in East of Eden. Photograph: Netflix<\/p>\n East of Eden was Steinbeck\u2019s penultimate major work; he thought it his finest. Critics disagreed. They thought its examination of good and evil \u2013 whether we are born to be one or the other, whether we have a choice, how much we can fight our\u00a0instincts\u00a0\u2013 was heavy-handed and the author guilty\u00a0of an intrusive moralism that prevented the book from ringing true. The public, however, took it to heart as a soapy family drama \u2013 Cain and Abel, but out west and set over three\u00a0generations. Perhaps this was not what Steinbeck\u00a0intended, but it made the novel\u00a0an\u00a0instant\u00a0bestseller.<\/p>\n It\u2019s on this plane that the new version, by Zoe Kazan (the granddaughter of Elia, who directed the 1955\u00a0film\u00a0adaptation starring an unknown actor called James Dean) works best. Lavishly shot, full of emotional and physical incident and fine performances, there is little chance to be distracted.Adam falls hopelessly in love with Cathy while the\u00a0far\u00a0more worldly-wise Charles looks on with contempt and despair.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The second episode unpacks her torrid backstory\u00a0\u2013 the born manipulator, leaving desperate boys and\u00a0suicidal men in her wake, who moves into prostitution as a pragmatic business move and specialises in practices that most 19th-century whorehouses were hoping wouldn\u2019t make it that far west until the internet age, betraying benefactors, committing arson, faking her death and abandoning husbands and eventually babies in her quest for riches and freedom. Or possibly just for kicks.<\/p>\n Cathy\u2019s sociopathy or psychopathy was part of the critical rejection of the book \u2013 a woman couldn\u2019t possibly! \u2013 that feels dated now, but it doesn\u2019t mean it has become much more interesting in the years since. Pugh does what she can with the part \u2013 but Cathy remains a spectacle to be ogled rather than a fully fledged character.<\/p>\n A welcome chance to breathe \u2026 Hoon Lee as Lee with Ciara\u0301n Hinds as Samuel Hamilton in East of Eden. Photograph: Kristy Griffin\/Netflix<\/p>\n The men \u2013 some things never change \u2013 fare better.\u00a0The brothers have much to get their teeth into,\u00a0as they\u00a0struggle with their love and hate for each\u00a0other, for her, for their lives and for their father. One\u00a0of the most finely drawn and touching relationships grows gradually between Adam\u2019s neighbour Samuel Hamilton (Ciar\u00e1n Hinds<\/a>), once Adam and Cathy have moved to the Salinas valley, and Adam\u2019s manservant, Lee (Hoon Lee) ; it gives us a welcome chance to breathe. A\u00a0lovely performance from Martha Plimpton as the\u00a0unexpectedly vulnerable brothel madam Faye\u00a0\u2013 first Cathy\u2019s boss, then another of Cathy\u2019s victims \u2013 helps aerate things, too.<\/p>\n As a high-quality family saga, then, it\u2019s brilliant, compelling entertainment. As an excoriation of human\u00a0nature, as an examination of how helpless we\u00a0are before our inborn proclivities, it perhaps cannot\u00a0help but lack the heft it needs.<\/p>\n East of Eden is on Netflix<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is rarely difficult to distinguish between a\u00a0John Steinbeck novel and a ray of sunshine. 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