It is rarely difficult to distinguish between a John Steinbeck novel and a ray of sunshine. The new adaptation of his 1952 book East of Eden doesn’t buck the trend and wastes no time plunging us into the murk. The opening scene follows a beaten, bloodied woman as she crawls across a muddy field towards the only house for miles around. Out of the house come two brothers. One rushes to rescue her. The other takes one look and announces: “This is a mistake.” Brother, you have no idea.
The rescuer is Adam Trask (Christopher Abbott), the sceptic Charles (Mike Faist). Cut back 25 years to watch them being raised in misery in an essentially motherless household by their monstrous father, Cyrus (Tracy Letts), a civil war veteran and ceaseless recounter of his heroics therein. Charles longs to follow in his footsteps. Adam is beaten for his lack of aggressive instinct. But it is Adam whom Cyrus sends to enlist and Charles he forces to stay behind and work on the family farm. “Because,” he says to Adam in a rare instance of paternal wisdom, “there are loose things in him that should be reined down.”
