Mildred Pierce (2011)

Directors: Todd Haynes                                 Writer: Todd Haynes & Jon Raymond
Film Score: Carter Burwell                             Cinematography: Edward Lachman
Starring: Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce, Mare Winningham and Morgan Turner

HBO has done some incredible work over the last decade in producing films, but one of their greatest undertakings has been a new kind of miniseries. One of the most powerful is Band of Brothers, based on the book by Steven Ambrose that follows one company of the 101st Airborne from D-Day through VE Day. It was co-produced by Tom Hanks who also co-produced another great series, From Earth to the Moon, chronicling the space race. Arguably their most popular success has been John Adams which featured Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. But besides fascinating non-fiction, HBO has now begun filming classic novels in the same way that the BBC has been doing for decades. One of the first is Mildred Pierce from acclaimed American novelist James M. Cain.

Of course Mildred Pierce was filmed by Warner Brothers in 1945 by Michael Curtiz and won an Academy Award for Joan Crawford in the title role. But they turned Cain’s novel into more of a film noir. Writer-director Todd Haynes wanted to keep true to the original story and his five-part series does an excellent job of capturing the style of the book as well as the era. The Warner Brothers film was also set in the present, while the HBO series restores it to it’s Depression era milieu and did a tremendous job of recreating Los Angeles of the nineteen thirties. Kate Winslet was a terrific choice as the title character. She plays a housewife who has finally had enough of her husband’s cheating and kicks him out of the house. She also has two daughters, the youngest played by Quinn McColgan and the eldest played by Morgan Turner.

It turns out that giving her husband the boot is about the only time Mildred Pierce was able to do something positive for herself when it came to the people in her life. The worst abuser is her oldest daughter Vida. She is a snob and a brat and isn’t shy about letting her mother know how much she hates living in Glendale. But Mildred needs to make a living and works her way up from making pies to owning her own restaurant. This didn’t come without a price, however, as sleeping with one of her husband’s best friends is part of the deal. Later, when she falls in love with a down on his luck playboy she winds up syphoning money from her business to keep him, as well as her snooty daughter, in style. But Mildred trudges on, refusing to see how these people are using her and, even when she does realize it, not really caring.

Those expecting the same kind of noir sensibilities--and sensationalism--as the Warners film, will be disappointed. It’s a luxurious and unhurried series that captures not only the drama in her life, but the atmosphere as well. The scenes on the city streets feel a little cramped because of the necessity to avoid modern buildings, but the scenes in Santa Barbara and Laguna Beach are wonderfully open and pristine. Whether through specific locations or CGI it feels very authentic. Haynes has a nice, naturalistic style that lets the Cain’s characters reveal themselves rather than through camera manipulation. Carter Burwell is not my favorite composer, but he does an adequate job here. Mainly, however, it’s the actors. Guy Pearce is terrific as the gigolo, and the two actresses playing Vida are perfectly evil. The rest of the supporting cast is equally good. Mildred Pierce is not for everyone, but it’s a very nice piece of filmmaking that I enjoyed tremendously.