A Separate Peace *** (2004, J Barton, Toby Moore, Jacob Pitts, Danny Swerdlow, Hume Cronyn) – Classic Movie Review 11,383

Peter Yates’s final film remakes A Separate Peace from the 1959 novel by John Knowles.

Director Peter Yates’s 2004 Canadian coming-of-age drama A Separate Peace is a welcome TV movie remake of Larry Pearce’s 1972 movie A Separate Peace. Wendy Kesselman adapts the 1959 novel by John Knowles, set against the backdrop of World War Two, following complex themes of friendship, co-dependency, identity, morality, patriotism and loss of innocence.

It is a delicate, subtle, touching tale of the special close friendship of two schoolboy roomies, the introverted intellectual Gene and the extroverted athletic Finny (J Barton, Toby Moore), at a US East Coast prep school in 40s America.

Gene shakes the branch of a tree they are standing on, which causes Finny to fall and shatter his leg, which cripples him.

It is the last work of Hume Cronyn (as the headmaster Professor Carmichael), who died on 15 June 2003 of prostate cancer.

It also proved the last film of Peter Yates (nominated for four Oscars), who died on 9 January 2011, aged 81.

Also in the cast are Jacob Pitts as Brinker, Danny Swerdlow as Leper, Aaron Ashmore, Adam Frost, Matt Sadowski [Matt Austin], Sean McCann, Alison Pill, R D Reid and Colin Fox.

Yates recalled: ‘I think there’s probably some truth in the theory that I prefer heroes who fight against adversity and make it through from being the underdog to winning.’

Brinker was based on Knowles’s Phillips Exeter Academy classmate and friend Gore Vidal.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,383

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