Daily Archives: July 12, 2024

The World According to Garp (1982)

The World According to Garp
Directed by George Roy Hill
Written by Steve Tesich from the novel by John Irving
1982/US
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

Roberta: I’m a hopeless romantic in a male chauvinist world.

The story is quirky and contrived but the warm heart behind all of it made me love the film.

Nurse Jenny Fields (Glenn Close) was a feminist before her time and a firm combatant against male lust.  She found the closest route to artificial insemination using a comatose soldier.  She named the baby Garp.  Garp grows up to be Robin Williams.  He had  an unconventional upbringing to say the least.

He yearns to be a real writer and falls in love with a real reader, Helen (Mary Beth Hurt).  They marry and have two adorable little boys.  Garp proves to be the ultimate family man and a critically acclaimed serious novelist.   But you can’t be forever blessed, especially in this movie.

On a separate track, Jenny writes a radical feminist manifesto which is a critical flop and a massive best seller.  She comes to run a kind of half way house for women by the sea.  Many of her followers are also Ellen Jamesians, after a girl whose tongue was cut out during a rape.  Some of these have their own tongues removed.  Another regular in the house is Roberta (John Lithgow), a transgender woman who used to play tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles.  Much more happens than I can describe here.

First off, I thought the acting in this film was really great.  Close and Lithgow are especially wonderful.  They play their unconventional characters with a sincerity that just makes you love them.  Lithgow may even outdo Dustin Hoffman as a woman.  I read the novel when it first came out and was prepared to be disappointed by the film adaptation so avoided it.  I shouldn’t have waited until now to see it.