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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Miramax
Salesrank: 15379
Released: January 14, 2003 |
| Our Price: $5.37 |
| Used Price: $3.63 |
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MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Hailed by critics nationwide, ETHAN FROME is the classic Edith Wharton tale of blazing passion and forbidden desire! Screen sensation Liam Neeson (K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER, SCHINDLER'S LIST, HUSBANDS AND WIVES) stars as Ethan Frome, a man torn between his joyless marriage to one woman and his lustful desire for another (Patricia Arquette -- STIGMATA, TRUE ROMANCE, TROUBLE BOUND). His actions soon lead to a forbidden triangle between one love that is, and one that will never be. See what all the heat is about in this timeless story of love, betrayal, and desire!
Description of Ethan Frome:
Here's the film of a novel nobody liked in high school (but probably succumbed to when they read it in later life, as they should). Based on the book by Edith Wharton, it's one of those repressed romances of longing and regret carried out in real time and real life. Liam Neeson plays the humble Ethan, manipulated into marrying a plain and sickly woman (Joan Allen, every bit as good as she is in The Contender), who still manages to dominate him. When she grows so ill that Ethan requires help to care for her, they import her poor cousin (Patricia Arquette), who sparks thoughts in Ethan that never occurred to him with his wife. Neeson has a great fire within, as he confronts an array of possibilities that simply remain out of reach because the alternative is unthinkable in this tight-knit New England community. Arquette bubbles with life, while Allen can freeze blood at 100 paces with one of her icy glances. Slow-moving at times but worth it for the final payoff. Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love). --Mark Englehart
Ethan Frome Reviews:
You can never turn the work of Edith Wharton into a movie!! 
2009-09-19 - I knew this would happen, knowing how many books get turned into bad movies, especially the work of literary giants like Edith Wharton. If you are NOT a reader of fine literature, you may like this movie - a simple romance, like millions of other movies.
But if you have read Wharton's classic novelette, one of the finest pieces of work, you would dislike this movie immensely. Wharton was born in 1862 and died in 1937 at 75 years. She won a Pulitzer Prize in Literature for The Age of Innocence.
With a unique writing style, one that absorbs the reader into deeper thoughts and greater description, fine prose, and without rushing through the plot.
The 1993 film's cinematography was beautiful, characters were nothing memorable and the focus of the story was missing, the intense relationships, the gravity of suspense, the extent of the deeper personalities we so became used to. Liam Neeson does a decent job at playing Ethan, but we really miss what and who Zeena, Mattie and Ethan are all about. The book is not about sex or lurid romance, it is subtle. That is what needs to come across in a Wharton based movie, and Hollywood doesn't do that, and you can't expect them to. And reading the book, one can instantly recognizes "movie scenes", predicting which scenes Hollywood will use. Ethan Frome is not meant for the big screen!
If you are willing to delve into dramatic plays, try Best American Plays: 1918-1958 Supplementary Volume Complete for a captivating, engaging, play based on the book Ethan Frome. The play was first staged in 1936 and the adaption of of the book is done by a father and son team, Owen Davis and Donald Davis. This play is wonderful!!!
But, try the book Ethan Frome and see why this should never had been turned into a Hollywood movie. .....Rizzo
Very Poor Rendering of My All-Time Favorite Book 
2008-11-12 - CAUTION: SPOILER ALERT!
Ethan Frome is the most poignant, beautiful, tragic story I've ever read, and is by far Edith Wharton's best work. Yet somehow, despite the fact that Liam Neeson plays the title role and does very well, the filmmakers managed to do a poor job conveying this story.
The decision to replace the book's level-headed, sympathetic introducer of the story with a whiny-voiced, invasive preacher was ridiculous. Patricia Arquette's rendition of Mattie Silver(my favorite female character of all time!!) was completely wrong, although she did have a few good moments. Arquette didn't have the dark hair or the luminous beauty of Mattie, and her acting did almost no justice whatsoever to Mattie's simple but profound character. The nervous laughing in particular drove me crazy. Mattie needs to be portrayed by someone who can fully express her personality -- so warm, intelligent, and vibrant against the wintry cold setting and Ethan's equally frigid wife, Zeena. Ethan's character also needed further exploring through better dialogue and visual story-telling.
Joan Allen was pitch perfect as Zeena, Ethan's abominable hypochondriac wife. If they ever do another film version of this story, I'd want to bring her back. But again, they needed to play up Zeena's manipulative, vindictive, withholding, and silently watchful side even more than they did in order to increase the tension in the household as Ethan and Mattie become increasingly inseparable.
There are two things that I take the most serious issue with in this film. One -- Mattie and Ethan do NOT have sex in the book. At any time. They kiss, in one of the most sensual moments in all of literature, but they do not have sex, Wharton makes it quite clear. Which is why their story is so pure, so poignant, so frustrated, and so desperate. And in this film, they do sleep together, twice. One of those scenes is an appropriately sensual, tense moment, and the other is very sad and desperate but also very... weird and somewhat disturbing. But my point is that changing a crucial factor of the plotline and character development works against the film -- if they were looking for greater intensity, they actually undercut it. Ethan and Mattie sleeping together, especially with so little on-screen development of their romance, makes their love story look more like a lust story and takes away the gorgeous tension of the book.
Which brings me to number two -- the build-up to the lovers' attempted suicide is the most emotionally intense literature I have ever read. The film needs to make it clear that Ethan and Mattie are blocked at every turn by grinding poverty and social boundaries from being able to escape together. A screen adaptation of this book needs to make their love so palpable, so fathomless, that the audience completely understands that they have no alternative BUT suicide if they want to stay together. And then that scene needs to be tremendous.
There were other things that needed to be made perfectly clear, as well -- especially the state of Mattie's mental and physical condition at the end of the story. This film version doesn't make it clear that she is made a quadraplegic with a completely changed personality through the head trauma she experienced in the accident. That is the most horrible sorrow of the entire book, and it needs to be emphasized in order to show the terribleness of Ethan's suffering.
Finally, this book reads like the most gorgeous cinema you could ever encounter -- and a film version ABSOLUTELY MUST be visually stunning, drawn-out, and poignant with the most sumptuous direction, cast, cinematography, color palette, and music that can be found. And this version just didn't cut it, I'm very sorry to say.
Ethan Frome 
2008-05-26 - I am in LOVE with Liam Neeson. Now, that being said, this is still a wonderful film. The acting is very good. The story, by Edith Wharton,is a tragedy and ends tragically. But it's beautiful nevertheless. The setting is so wonderfully New England, chilly and gray at times. So get out a box of tissues, a platter of chocolate chip cookies for comfort, and sit back uninterrupted to watch this film. You'll be aware that you are watching a classic.
Ethan Frome 
2008-04-07 - Though there are differences between the book and film, this version is creative and engaging.
Great movie
2007-09-05 - I never read the book, so I was very surprised by the ending. I loved the movie. I thought Liam Neeson did a great job as usual.
