Ethan Frome

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    Ethan Frome by Edith Warton is a classic for many reasons. First of all it’s old. Classics have to be old to stand the test of time. Frome was published in 1911 and quickly became popular. People still read it today. It’s a short little novel that takes place over a few days in a run down cabin in the fictional Starkfield, Massachusetts. Ethan Frome lives in that cabin with his sick wife Zeena and her cousin Mattie Silver. The novel is depressing to the point of actually affecting the reader. You start to feel like poor Ethan in that freezing old house with his even colder wife and helpless cousin Mattie. No book does a better job of making the reader feel trapped; trapped like Ethan in eternity with a perpetually sick wife and a desire to break free. Things get weird when Zeena goes to Bettsbridge to see a doctor and Ethan and Mattie discover their true love for each other. It basically goes downhill from there; downhill like a sled on a cold winter’s day.

     The movie dropped on the scene in 1993, over 80 years after the novel. This gave people some time to think the book over, decide whether it was a classic or not. It was in ’93 and it still is today. Directed by John Madden and starring Liam Neeson as Ethan and Joan Allen as Zeena, the film gets casting down pretty well. Neeson has the right amount of rugged manliness with a side order of charm to fill those lumbering shoes of Ethan’s and Allen is wonderfully wretched as Zeena the hypochondriac. Patricia Arquette creates likeable innocence in the role of Mattie Silver. As far as casting goes, the film gets it right on the money.

Buy the Movie

     Where most book to film adaptations cut, cut, cut in order to squeeze the story into a couple of hours, Ethan Frome has the opposite problem. At less than a hundred pages, the filmmakers needed to add, rather than take away. What they added usually works to flesh out the story. Zeena is more of a character in the film, showing more emotional dimension. This is a pleasant surprise. I can’t imagine any actress playing her with as much stiffness and indifference as the way she is written in the book. However, the narrator from the beginning and end of the novel becomes a preacher and a bit of a religious tone is introduced, needlessly in my opinion. He isn’t a character in the meat of the story so I don’t see why he needed to be in the film as much as he is.

     The nice part about John Madden’s Ethan Frome is that it stays true to the novel. With only four or five major scenes in the book, staying true seems unavoidable. It’s a nicely plotted book and the filmmakers took advantage of it, and rightfully so. But all in all, what do we really talk about when we talk about Ethan Frome? The ending. Why is Ethan the sad, crippled man that he is. I’m happy to say the movie does it right. The book does it better if only for one detail (Zeena’s face appears before Ethan, blocking his vision, causing him to lose control of the sled). Still, the ending is so shocking and depressing that it works on both accounts. Whether watching the film or reading the book, no one wants to be Ethan Frome when it’s over. No one.