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.
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