Taglines: What if one of life’s great mysteries moved in upstairs?
Hearts in Atlantis is a gentle, innocent film about the reflections of an aging man, who returns to his home town after the death of his best friend. Memories of life at age 11 floods back as it was a magical time that changed his life. Three 11 year old children (Bobby, Carol, and Sully) share their lives. Carol and Bobby have a special affection for one another including sharing a kiss “by which all others will be measured”.
Bobby lives with his mother, a bitter, vain woman who looks for pleasures for herself without sharing much with her son. Into their lives comes a mysterious new boarder, who befriends the boy but generates distrust from the mother. As time passes, the man and boy share confidences and special powers are revealed. The man warns the boy to be on the lookout for the “lowmen”, who were seeking him. The two share a summer’s adventures and come to love one another before the inevitable happens. A confrontation with a school bully also changes everyone.
Hearts in Atlantis is a 2001 American-Australian mystery drama thriller film directed by Scott Hicks and starring Anthony Hopkins and Anton Yelchin. It is loosely adapted from Stephen King’s Dark Tower tie-in Low Men in Yellow Coats, a novella in the collection Hearts in Atlantis after which the film was named. The film is dedicated to cinematographer Piotr Sobociński, who died of a heart attack a few months before the release.
The film opened at #3 raking in $9,021,494 in its opening weekend at the U.S. box office. The film would eventually gross a domestic total of $24,185,781, fairly short of its $31 million budget, but with an international $6,733,634, it would total $30,919,415, about $80,000 short of the budget.
About the Story
Hearts in Atlantis tells the story of Robert “Bobby” Garfield, a middle-aged man recollecting his past, in particular the summer when he was eleven years old. During that summer, he and his two friends, Carol Gerber and John “Sully” Sullivan, experienced many things together, the most mysterious of which was meeting an older gentleman named Ted Brautigan.
Bobby lives with his single mother, the self-centered Liz Garfield, who takes in Brautigan as a boarder. Ted takes the lonely Bobby under his wing, while his mother is busy with her job — including entertaining her boss as a way of paying off debt supposedly left by Bobby’s late father.
The two form a paternal father-son bond, and it slowly becomes evident that Ted has some psychic and telekinetic powers. These same powers are the reason that Brautigan has come to this sleepy town. In due course Ted entrusts Bobby with the knowledge that he has escaped the grasp of the “Low Men”, strange people who would stop at nothing to get him back in their control.
After reading Bobby’s mind and realizing that the boy dreams of owning a bicycle; Ted kindly offers Bobby $1 a week in exchange for his reading a newspaper out aloud. Bobby quickly figures out that Ted has some other purpose in mind. Mysteriously, Ted asks Bobby to keep an eye on the neighborhood looking for any signs of the “low men”, like announcements about missing pets. Bobby sees one, but does not tell Ted, afraid to lose his new friend.
Bobby, Carol and John have frequent conflicts with the local town bully, Harry Doolin, whom Ted is able to scare away by looking into his mind and finding out that his violence is used to cover up the fact that he is secretly a cross-dresser. However, at one point, Harry hurts Carol, and when Ted manipulates her dislocated shoulder into place, Liz arrives, after being raped by her boss, and mistakenly believes that Ted is a child molester. She is confronted by Ted’s ability to tell her the truth about what she has been through, and how her behavior is affecting her relationship with her son, providing another reason that Ted must leave. That and the “low men” are closing in on him.
Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
Directed by: Scott Hicks
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Hope Davis, David Morse, Mika Boorem, Alan Tudyk, Deirdre O’Connell, Brett Fleisher, Celia Weston, Timothy Reifsnyder
Screenplay by: Stephen King, William Goldman
Production Design by: Barbara Ling
Cinematography by: Barbara Ling
Film Editing by: Pip Karmel
Costume Design by: Alexandria Forster
Set Decoration by: Heather Jenkins, Leslie E. Rollins
Art Direction by: Mark Worthington
Music by: Mychael Danna, Max Steiner
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and thematic elements.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: September 28, 2001
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