‘Husbands die every day, Dolores…’
Recently I’ve taken to reading or re-reading something from the Stephen King canon and then watching the accompanying film adaptation. In the case of Firestarter, this resulted in reading an underwhelming novel and then sitting through two different underwhelming film adaptations. Now, Dolores Claiborne is an excellent film, but in this case, I would strongly and unusually recommend watching the film first and then reading the book…
The titular Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates) is accused of murdering her long-time employee Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt) to inherit her huge fortune. Local detective John Mackey (Christopher Plummer) is particularly keen to pin the death on our eponymous protagonist because he also believes that Dolores killed her husband Joe St. George (David Strathairn) many years previously. Meanwhile, Dolores’ troubled daughter Selena (Jennifer Jason Leigh) returns to the small island community they are both from to help her mother fight her case.
Director Taylor Hackford (The Devil’s Advocate) and writer Tony Gilroy understandably decide that one woman delivering a monologue in a police station is no basis for a feature-length movie and so the character of Selena is fleshed out and much of the information that we receive pretty much immediately in the book is withheld until the film’s third act. This is undoubtedly the best decision for the film as an independent piece of work but if you’ve read the book already, that does rob many of the revelations here of their power.
It is Bates who really sells Dolores Claiborne in a role that couldn’t be further from her other famous King character Annie Wilkes. While both women are formidable, headstrong and determined, Dolores kills out of love, whereas Wilkes does it (or attempts to do it) out of obsession. The disparate nature of the two performances acts as a testament to Bates’ considerable skill as a dramatic actor.
Dolores Claiborne is a mid to top-tier King adaptation that improves on the book in some ways and doesn’t match up to it in others. As previously alluded to, this is probably the only King book about which I would recommend watching the film first. A forgotten ’90s gem.