Miniseries Review: 'John Adams'

John Adams (2008)

Written by: Kirk Ellis & Michelle Ashford

Based on: John Adams, by David McCullough

Directed by: Tom Hooper

Starring: Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, Stephen Dillane, David Morse, Danny Huston, Sarah Polley, Tom Wilkinson, Rufus Sewell, Justin Theroux, Guy Henry

On June 16, 2009, HBO Home Entertainment released the DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) home media editions of its Emmy-winning miniseries John Adams. Produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman (Band of Brothers), this HBO Films/Playtone production is an adaptation of historian David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of one of America's most influential yet least understood Founding Fathers and the second President of the United States.

Written by Kirk Ellis (Sons of Liberty, Into the West) and Michelle Ashford (Masters of Sex, The Pacific) and directed by Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, Elizabeth I), John Adams originally aired on HBO between March 16 and April 20, 2008, and covers the 56-year period that begins with the Boston Massacre and ends with the deaths of both Adams (Paul Giamatti) and his friend and sometime political rival Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane).

Although this biopic is the story of the United States' first half-century and covers the Revolutionary period and the founding of the American republic, it's also a love story; the seven-part miniseries shows the private triumphs and tragedies faced by Adams and his wife Abigail (Laura Linney).

The miniseries is divided into seven parts. They are:

• Part 1: Join or Die (1770-1774)
• Part 2; Independence (1774-1776)
• Part 3: Don't Tread on Me (1777-1781)
• Part 4: Reunion (1781-1789)
• Part 5: Unite or Die (1789-1797)
• Part 6: Unnecessary War (1797-1801)
• Part 7: Peacefield (1803-1826)

My Take

© 2008 HBO Films

John Dickinson: One colony cannot be allowed to take its sister colonies headlong into the maelstrom of war. Parliament will be eager to call a halt to hostilities, as are we. They will seek conciliation. We must offer them an olive branch. I move this assembly consider a humble and dutiful petition be dispatched to his Majesty, one that includes a plain statement that the colony desires immediate negotiation and accommodation of these unhappy disputes and that we are willing to enter into measures to achieve that reconciliation.

John Adams: The time for negotiation is past. The actions of the British army at Lexington and Concord speak plainly enough. If we wish to regain our natural-born rights as Englishmen then we must fight for them.

John Dickinson: I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and can find them only in the laws of political society. I have looked for our rights in the constitution of the English government and found them there! Our rights have been violated, Mr. Adams, that is beyond dispute. We must provide a plan to convince Parliament to restore those rights! Do we wish to become aliens to the mother country? No, gentlemen, we must come to terms with the mother country. No doubt the same ship which carries forth our list of grievances will bring back their redress.

John Adams: Mr. Dickinson. My wife and young children live on the main road to Boston, fewer than five miles from the full might of the British Empire. Should they sit and wait for Gage and his savages to rob them of their home, their possessions, their very lives? No, sir! Powder and artillery are the surest and most infallible conciliatory measures we can adopt!

John Dickinson: If you explode the possibility of peace, Mr. Adams, and I tell you now, you will have blood on your hands!

John Adams: And I tell you, Mr. Dickinson, that to hold out an olive branch to Britain is a measure of gross imbecility.

John Dickinson: If you New England men continue to oppose our measures of reconciliation, you will leave us no choice but to break off from you entirely and carry on the opposition in our own way.

John Adams: I sit in judgment of no man's religion, Mr. Dickinson, but your Quaker sensibilities do us a gross disservice, sir. It is one thing to turn the other cheek, but to lie down on the ground like a snake and crawl toward the seat of power in abject surrender, well, that is quite another thing, sir. And I have no stomach for it, sir! No stomach at all!

Like most biopics of historical figures, John Adams does not depict the entire life story of the man  who HBO's publicists describe as " America’s least understood and most underestimated Founding Father." As I said earlier, it focuses on Adams' public and private life from his dutiful and successful defense of British Army Captain Thomas Preston (Ritchie Coster) and his men in the aftermath of the March 5, 1770 Boston Massacre to his post-Presidential twilight years and death on July 4, 1826, hours after his friend and fellow Founding Father Thomas Jefferson's demise. 

Writer Kirk Ellis (who wrote six episodes solo and co-wrote Part 4 with Michelle Ashford) did a good job of adapting David McCullough's book, although since I have not read the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, I can't say how faithfully. But considering that Adams, unlike George Washington, was first and foremost a lawyer and a politician rather than a military leader, the miniseries is interesting and enjoyable, propelled by Tom Hooper's deft directing and the performances of a stellar cast. 

I'm not terribly familiar with this period of American history because I tend to favor the modern era, especially the 20th and 21st Centuries. I know the basic facts of the Revolutionary War due to my interest in military history, but I'm not well-versed on the political history of the early days of the American republic. 

That being said, I was not surprised to learn that even though Ellis and Ashford had a well-written source in McCullough's eponymous book, John Adams is not 100% historically accurate. 

Obviously, when a film or miniseries sets out to dramatize a historical figure or a historical event (such as a pivotal battle or the race to the Moon), the writers and directors can't limit themselves to depicting what the historical record shows. This is true of From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers, and The Pacific, which, like John Adams, were produced by Tom Hanks and various colleagues. 

John Adams is no exception. It changes some details - some are trivial, some aren't - of its main characters' story for dramatic effect. 

Per the Internet Movie Database:

The film shows all troops acquitted for the Boston Massacre; however, two men were found guilty of murder because they were found to fire directly into the crowd. John Adams was able to have their charges reduced to manslaughter due to a loophole in British law by proving the men could read. The two soldiers were punished by branding on their thumbs.

Despite the fact that the first two episodes span more than six years (1770-1776), neither Nabby Adams nor John Quincy Adams seem to age. Since they were born in 1765 and 1767 respectively, both should have grown and aged significantly - from toddlers to young children - over that span of time.

After the death of Abigail, there is a scene where Dr. Benjamin Rush is consoling John Adams and encourages him to write to Thomas Jefferson. Benjamin Rush died 5 years before Abigail.

The second episode ("Independence") of the series has the "First Congress" meeting in 1775. They actually met briefly in 1774. It was the "Second Continental Congress who met in 1775 and STAYED in session until 1781 (the end of the war).

There are more errors of fact, dialogue, and even linguistic anachronisms, and they can be found here if you're into nitpicking. 

Overall, though, John Adams is still informative and entertaining, especially if you get the Blu-ray edition, which has two nifty extra features that provide historical context to the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning miniseries.

The first is the "pop up" Facts Are Stubborn Things, an exclusive-to-the-Blu-ray historical guide that gives viewers relevant information about the people and events depicted in each episode.

The second feature is Who's Who in History, which are biographies of each character in John Adams.

While I understand that John Adams has its flaws (including cinematographer Tak Fujimoto's often restless camera), I still recommend it. Despite its overuse of artistic license (including the use of the term "escalation," which was coined in the 20th Century and not widely used until the Sixties) John Adams is a tour-de-force for actors Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney and their large supporting cast. 

The miniseries also makes good use of location shooting in Colonial Williamsburg, some of the older sections of Boston and Washington, DC, and even Budapest, Hungary, where many of the set-in-Europe scenes were shot. Visual effects, excellent makeup, and lavish costume designs by Donna Zakowska (Original Sin, Crimes and Misdemeanors) help sell the illusion that the viewer is witnessing events that took place in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries.