Of Mice and Men

An adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel. George and Lennie are two labourers looking for work from farm to farm during the Great Depression. Lennie is huge and immensely strong but has the mind of a child; George looks after him. Their shared dream is to buy a small piece of land and work for nobody. They arrive at a new ranch. There is work, money accumulates, and for a moment the dream looks possible. But Lennie cannot gauge his own strength and damages everything he touches. The novel's subject is not only friendship; it is what dreaming means inside an economic order where nobody belongs anywhere. The film says this through the other hands on the ranch as well: an old man, a Black worker left on his own, and a woman with nobody to talk to. Gary Sinise directs and plays George; John Malkovich plays Lennie. The two had played the same text together on stage. Horton Foote wrote the screenplay. A carefully made example for anyone who likes literary adaptation and drama about 1930s America. For readers of the novel there are no surprises; the film stays largely with the text and preserves the ending exactly.