East of Eden debuts on Netflix on October 1.
Good vs. evil, brotherly rivalries, parental rejection, the notion of free will as opposed to fate… East of Eden has a lot going on. And the new Netflix iteration of the John Steinbeck epic is pretty great at conveying these ideas with a well-acted, handsomely produced, seven-episode miniseries that’s the streaming equivalent of a page-turner.
I confess to having never seen Elia Kazan’s 1955 adaptation of East of Eden in its entirety, despite its status as one of only three starring vehicles for James Dean. But what I do remember about it is mish-mashed in my head with another of his films, Giant, so much so that I was a bit surprised by how this version ended. That may also be in part because, surprisingly, there haven’t been a ton of film or TV adaptations of East of Eden beyond the Kazan/Dean film; there was a TV miniseries in 1981 starring Jane Seymour, and a long-gestating movie version that had Jennifer Lawrence attached at one point but never materialized, but otherwise that’s it.
And that’s just fine, because now Kazan’s granddaughter, the actress Zoe Kazan, has adapted the 1952 novel for the small screen. Along with directors Garth Davis and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Kazan takes the story and imparts a modern sensibility to what is, after all, an age-old tale. For East of Eden makes no bones about its ultimate source, which is the biblical tale of Cain and Abel. Indeed, the very title comes from the Book of Genesis: “So Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”
Only in this version of the story, the second Black Widow and the third Professor Xavier star! (Also, a former Ghost Rider villain shows up for a supporting turn.) I’m talking, of course, about Florence Pugh, who really is the centerpiece of this version of the story as Cathy Ames, and Christopher Abbott, who is the second lead as Adam Trask. Mike Faist (Challengers) plays Adam’s brother Charles, who winds up in the middle of things between Cathy and Adam even while the latter two are destined to marry and have children someday. East of Eden is a generational story, as we start Episode 1, “Brothers,” in the post-Civil War Connecticut of 1874 and eventually find our way to California’s Salinas Valley circa World War I in the finale, “Timshel.”
Pugh in particular stands out as the complicated, headstrong, smart, and quite evil Cathy.“I believe there are monsters born in this world to human parents,” Pugh’s Cathy tells us in voiceover in the opening line of the series. And that is certainly an idea that lingers over the 46 years or so of the Trask family that we are to bear witness to, though whereas Cathy – a cruel woman who does unspeakable things to those who love her most – takes that notion to be incontrovertible, Kazan is less convinced. Cathy may be a monster, but was she born that way or did other monsters turn the once innocent child that she was into one of their own?
Episode 1 spends a good amount of time with the young versions of Adam (Costa D'Angelo) and his brother Charles (Tom Sweet), as they are forced to run military drills under their father Cyrus (a hateful Tracy Letts), whose heart is still in the war and who plays favorites with his sons. “Adam, don’t you see? I love you better,” Cyrus tells his elder son while Charles is barely within earshot. And yet he has a funny way of showing this affection, choosing to send Adam off to fight in the army while making Charles – the son who actually has an interest in enlisting – stay home to mind the farm.
By the time Cathy comes into the brothers’ lives years later, she’s on death’s doorstep as well as the Trasks’, having been beaten savagely by forces unknown. She will also soon drive a wedge between Adam and Charles, just as their father did, upending all their lives in the years to come, even while that central question will continue to come up: Are monsters born, or are they made?
East of Eden constantly raises this idea, and sometimes it’s a bit too on the nose about it. “I want to be good” and similar lines are uttered by characters who we already know are struggling with the choices they’ve made, or are about to make. But then it has moments of sublime exploration of such notions. In particular, the relationship that forms between Hoon Lee’s Lee and Ciarán Hinds’ Samuel Hamilton yields a philosophical discussion around the idea of “timshel” – a Hebrew word that, according to Steinbeck’s translation, means “thou mayest.” In other words, you may, or you may not. It’s your choice to do good… or bad.
Hoon Lee (Your Friends & Neighbors) is a standout in this series, eventually entering the picture as the Chinese manservant of Adam’s household who, despite being American born, is still treated as a lesser by most of the whites who he lives among. His connection to Adam and Adam’s own sons, and how it leads him to reflect on his own life, is both heartwarming and at times sad. Hinds too plays an important and memorable part in the Trask family as Adam and Cathy move out West, while Joseph Zada and Joe Anders eventually join the series as the years progress, playing twin brothers Caleb and Aron, respectively, and effectively continuing the themes of fraternal friction as 20th century counterparts to their father and uncle.
As for Pugh, Abbott and Faist, the trio are excellent in their roles, with Pugh in particular standing out as the complicated, headstrong, smart, and quite evil Cathy. Though indeed born of human parents as Cathy was, Zoe Kazan’s East of Eden can’t help but contemplate how even a character like this could be the result of more than just fate. “To a monster, the norm must seem monstrous,” Cathy says in that same VO. But what if that monster had no choice but to become monstrous in order to survive?