On John Adams

I took some time this weekend to finish watching my Father’s Day gift.  Julie and the kids gave me the HBO mini-series John Adams, which is based on the David McCullough biography of the same name.  I really enjoyed the book several years ago and the DVD set has turned out to be a great supplement to it.  It’s good to see a man of Adams’ historical importance finally get his due in the public arena.  He worked just as hard along-side others in the pantheon of the American founding - Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison – but always seemed to be relegated to the status of an also-ran.  McCullough’s Pulitzer-winning story boosted Adam’s image and this series goes even further.

What I liked best about the DVD episodes were the honest portrayals of life in late 18th century life; subtleties that are easily overlooked when studying such momentous times.  While the battlefield fireworks were absent, realistic portrayals of the following really made up for it:

A captain of a British merchant ship is stripped, tarred and feathered at the Boston docks while John and his cousin Sam (brewer, patriot) look on.

Abigail Adams’ decides to have herself and the children inoculated against smallpox - complete with upper arm incision and pox-stricken sufferer/donor in the wagon outside.

Adams’ crossing of the Atlantic with his son John Quincy was complete with the pitching, rolling and heaving (yes, both kinds) passenger compartment.

French men and women were wearing makeup to appear more pale (!?)

One of the remarkable things about John Quincy from the book that is only alluded to in the DVD was his return from service as secretary to the American ambassador to Russia.  The movie shows Father John sending the 14-year-old off from Paris to Moscow but didn’t make explicit mention of the fact that the boy returned from Moscow to Boston, over land and sea, by himself only a couple of years later.  Not a show-stopper by any means, just an historical detail that I found fascinating.

What made this version cool was knowing that Paul Giamatti's portrayal of Mr. Adams’ pugnacity was based on his written correspondence with his wife Abigail and, in later life, Thomas Jefferson.  His lack of decorum, tenacity, toughness and self-criticism are not dramatic license but are real.  Adams is the kind of honest and genuine American figure we could look back to and associate with – perhaps more readily than those on Rushmore.

Comments

[Robert Pooley]

I thoroughly enjoyed the book... and to be able to see the miniseries brought a whole new dimension to it... The fascinating aspects to me were the incredible relationship between John and Abigail and the complicated hate/love relationship with Jefferson. All in all, the book and the miniseries were great!