Quite enjoyed the first two episodes of “John Adams,” the HBO miniseries based on David McCollough’s (avuncular-voiced narrator of “The Civil War” and Seabiscuit) biography of America’s second president. It’s a quality production, beautifully depicting the look and feel of Colonial America, and the dialogue was written at an erudite, thoughtful level, one that demands the audience pay attention.

“John Adams” also provides an apparently well-considered answer to a question pretty much every other film set in 18th-century America gets wrong: what did speech in the Colonies actually sound like back then? The last two films I saw set back then I’m sure were incorrect: The Patriot (d. Roland Emmerich, 2000), which follows the Star Wars paradigm: Bad Guys sound like Hammer Film bit-players, Yankees drawl like they walked in from a cowboy movie by accident. In 1776 (d. Peter H. Hunt, 1972), The signers of the Declaration of Independence sound stubbornly Midwestern, but they have lovely singing voices.

No, in the miniseries everyone has a slight British accent, which makes total sense, because before 1776 everyone in the Thirteen Colonies were nominally British. Still, it’s a bit strange– even slightly sacrilegious– to hear George Washington with a Highland lilt, but it’s probably correct.

Paul Giamatti plays John Adams, a fact not a few professional reviewers called miscasting. Variety:

Even beneath the wig and period clothes, [Paul Giamatti's] beady eyes and halting mutterings uncomfortably bring to mind less a Founding Father than Harvey Pekar, the self-loathing cartoonist he played in “American Splendor.” If not a fatal flaw, it is surely a distracting one.

The New York Times:

[…]Paul Giamatti is the wrong choice for the hero.

It’s not his fault. Mr. Giamatti, who starred in “Sideways,” is a gifted actor. Still, in this historical drama, Mr. Giamatti is a prisoner of a limited range and rubbery, cuddly looks — in 18th-century britches and wigs, he looks like Shrek.

I’m just going to go ahead and call this attitude wrong.

When I saw the first promo for “John Adams” (it was, I believe, the same evening of the final episode of “The Sopranos”) I got quite excited by the prospect of Paul Giamatti playing a Founding Father. Not because of how he would portray John Adams; because of what Paul Giamatti playing John Adams signifies.

Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) was a film director and theorist. He is most famous for his theories of montage– how assembled shots, through a dialectical process, create meaning and continuity. But another cinematic idea he invented and promulgated was “typeage:” The best person top play a specific role is the person who lives it. If you want someone to play a milkmaid, get a milkmaid, that sort of idea. This idea doesn’t work so well in our current context, however: There are few founding fathers laying around, waiting to be cast.

But Paul Giamatti brings something to the role that is very similar to typeage. He’s a short, weak-chinned actor, who carries himself with a certain anxiety. His plain, everyman looks and distressed delivery add a certain spin to every role he’s done: Tentative, uncertain, and in turn obsequious and eager to please.

By casting him, the producers are doing what Hollywood does best: making a casting statement. Most of the time, casting statements are logical or obvious: “Jackie Chan, you say? There just might be some kicking to the face in that one.” “Duane ‘The Rock’ Johnson, you say? I’ll venture there will be a profusion of athletic-looking low angles.” “Tom Cruise, you say? I feel certain that whatever he’s portraying, he’ll be the best example of whatever it is.”

Giamatti as Adams isn’t anything like the obvious sort of casting statement, which is why it threw so many people. The producers of the miniseries are trying to scale down the Founding Fathers, get them out of the engravings and make them recognizably human. They are making these slightly larger-than-life people feel real, to nuance them with the uncertainties, frailties and vanities embodied in us all. And Paul Giamatti is very human indeed. The best thing you can say about his performances is the depth of common humanity he conveys.

There may be another aspect of typeage we’re not commonly privy to, which may have influenced this peculiar casting in another way. Paul Giamatti is the son of Angelo Bartlett “Bart” Giamatti (1938-1989), one-time president of Yale University (later, as Commissioner of Baseball, he banished Pete Rose from the game for gambling). He may not look the stereotype, but Paul Giamatti is Ivy-League elite all the way: Schooled at Foote, Prepped at Choate, graduated from Yale. His drama-school classmates there were Edward Norton and Ron (Office Space) Livingston, who very much does look the Ivy League part. He was even a member of Skull and Bones– actually, considering his dad was President of the school at one time, that’s pretty believable. And his paternal grandmother’s family (Walton) trace their heritage to Colonial Massachusetts.

So he may be more of a Connecticut Yankee than a Boston Patriot, but there just might be a deeper connection to the role he’s playing.

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 8:55 am and is filed under Acting, General, Motion Pictures, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.