The Adventures of Ford Fairlane

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane

Ernest Hemingway once said American literature started with Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. This might be true for two reasons: it’s the first great American novel written in the vernacular, and it’s the first great American novel that honestly examines race relations. Unfortunately, more recently some narrow-minded proponents of Political Correctness have attacked this book; they wouldn’t know irony or humor if it hit them over their heads, and they can’t distinguish between what is said or done in a work of fiction and what an author thinks about those words or deeds.

The story follows a half-educated white outcast boy whose drunken father abuses him, so he takes off down the Mississippi with an escaped slave called Jim. Although Huck subscribes to many 19th-century racist views toward African Americans, he has never really thought about them and during their days together on the river, Jim re-educates him.

Eventually Huck decides that if helping slaves escape is sinful then he must be guilty too.

This tale already has been told on screen half a dozen times (or thereabouts), including twice as movies by this title. Here it returns as “The Adventures of Huck Finn,” a lively adaptation from young director Stephen Sommers who neither dwells upon nor avoids its humanistic message but lets his hero undergo change before our eyes even while spending much more time depicting various adventures along their way such as encounters with fugitive criminals; feuding families; professional con artists known only as The King and The Duke.

I started reading the book at 7 years old. I couldn’t understand every word, but I understood enough to know that everything was new and strange in the world of Huck Finn. The French spoke a different language; there were millions of stars in the sky; and it wasn’t right to steal fruit just because it was in season, unless you promised never to steal any out-of-season fruit.

In these chapters always with lyrical descriptions of the river and a thunderstorm that Twain said sounded like barrels rolling down a flight of stairs I think Twain captured some essential part of what it is to be human. When Huck Finn talked with his friend Jim alone on the raft, and they just wondered about things together. About foreign languages, stars, and fruits: even when their curiosity seemed silly or wild or dangerously deep (like his friend’s belief that snakeskin could cure measles), there was always something so desperate-hearted good about those questions.

But eventually they got around to race. They got around to slavery. And then Jim explained himself: “Black people,” he said quietly one night while they were lying next each other under blankets made from stolen sheeting after feeling guilty for hours upon end having dreams where he still owned slaves who now had names faces families homes “Black people have feelings too.”

This realization changed everything for Huck; he said so himself later on when he wrote “It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go see if she was all right still.” He realized black people had as much right to be free as anybody else; they deserved respect from him just like everybody else did too.

What happened inside Huck’s head during those fifteen minutes is one of our most important moments in American literature–so important that some folks don’t like it and would rather we didn’t teach these books at school anymore because boys still say ‘nigger.’ But I think this argument is short-sighted.

The movie, of course, doesn’t use that word either. It also doesn’t get into Huck’s head very far at all. I understand why: entertainers worry about offending their audience too much these days. But it’s not a bad little film with some strong performances all around.

Nothing about it seems wrong to me; depth could’ve been added in places but wasn’t. I liked watching those actors work and Sommers knows how to put together a period piece, so I hope more people see this movie and then read the book that taught Jim everything he knew.

Watch The Adventures of Ford Fairlane For Free On Gomovies.