May 5, 7pm, Chicago Heights (2010)
by
Thursday, May 5, 7pm
ICE THEATERS
210 W 87th Street
Chicago, IL
Admission: $5.00
Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg,Ohio, is sometimes named as a great work of fiction that cannot be filmed. Daniel Nearing demonstrates in “Chicago Heights” that’s not necessarily true.
Nearing finds an approach that in 90 minutes accomplishes the uncanny feat of distilling the book’s essence. What Nearing does, and it is rather brilliant, is show us [the protagonist] in old age, under a blanket on his bed, remembering, dreaming or hallucinating about the people he has known. A narrator explains his thoughts. Remarkably for a film of average length, Nearing touches on almost every one of Anderson’s characters, and because of his meditative stylistic approach the film never feels rushed or choppy. Chicago Heights is seen as a not particularly lovely place drowsing near the prairie with the skyline of modern Chicago in the distance. Much of it was shot on location, and Nearing succeeds in establishing it as a place like Winesburg where the countryside is always in walking distance, and one can go there with one’s grotesqueries and feel at peace.
Nearing is not the first artist to be drawn to Winesburg. It influenced Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck and Salinger.
“It is a beautiful book, and has inspired this beautiful film.”
—ROGER EBERT