For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved Anne Shirley, the protagonist
of the beloved L. M. Montgomery series, and I’m equally swept away by
Kevin Sullivan’s flawless adaptation of the first book in miniseries
form. Almost as good is his sequel, Anne of Avonlea, though it takes considerably more liberties with the story. However, his third
and fourth Anne films are a complete departure from the books, and they
threaten to sap away much of the charm of his own first two
installments.
The fourth, and presumably final, chapter in Sullivan’s Anne saga is Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning.
Right off the bat, he alienates most of his female audience by killing
off Gilbert, that stalwart doctor who waited so patiently for Anne to
accept his regard for her, setting millions of hearts aflutter in the
process. Sullivan’s series is set a couple of decades after
Montgomery’s, so while the books show us a middle-aged Anne and Gilbert
watching their sons go off to fight in World War I, here we have a
middle-aged Gilbert dying against the backdrop of World War II.
Seemingly, he has been killed in action, though the movie barely bothers
to mention why Anne is on her own. It all feels very glossed over.
Another problem is that the cast is almost entirely unfamiliar. Aside
from brief glimpses of Jonathan Crombie and Colleen Dewhurst as Anne
remembers Gilbert and Marilla and a quick appearance by Patricia
Hamilton as Rachel Lynde, who’s still chugging along well into her 90s,
no actors from the original miniseries remain, and few characters do.
Anne is now portrayed by Barbara Hershey, as well as Hannah
Endicott-Douglas in flashbacks to Anne’s youth. The present finds Anne
back in Avonlea, hoping to sell Green Gables, but first she wants to
enjoy its quietude once more as she tries to work out the kinks in a
play she’s writing for a community theater production. When she stumbles
upon an old letter sent to Marilla by her father, it drastically
changes the direction of her play and sends her in search of some
definitive answers about her past.
That’s where my biggest
problem with the movie lies. Here, we find out that Anne lived happily
with her parents until the age of nine or so, and then her mother died
in a tragic accident and her father headed for the hills. As a coping
mechanism, she made up a story about both of her parents succumbing to
illness in her infancy.
Um... What?
I’m sorry, this is just too great a leap for this purist, and it cheapens Anne of Green Gables
immeasurably if we’re supposed to believe that Anne just kept up this
ruse indefinitely. It renders her not so much imaginative as an
egregious liar. And Green Gables is such a glorious haven for Anne in
large part because she never had a place she could truly call home. If
she had a normal, happy childhood for nine years, then Matthew and
Marilla’s impact is greatly reduced. The whole thing just puts a sour
taste in my mouth.
I couldn’t connect much with the older,
melancholy Anne with writer’s block and a boatload of daddy issues. Much
more engaging were the flashbacks, and Endicott-Douglas was very
believable as a younger Anne, capturing her feisty spirit and tendency
toward the overdramatic wonderfully. Sullivan gives her several exciting
adventures, including a sojourn in a horrific homeless shelter of sorts
that is largely a rip-off of The Count of Monte Cristo. But her
subsequent immersion in the Thomas family falls apart, and there’s a
definite disconnect at the end, with her abandonment a little too abrupt
and complete to make much sense.
I will always love Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, and I thank Sullivan for making them. But he should have quit while he was ahead.
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