The Cider House Rules

Year: 1999 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 3.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 1.0 / 10 3.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, sexuality, nudity, substance abuse and some violence. Nothing too extreme - the themes are much more disturbing than graphic, more mental than physical but they are there.

Story

The movie concerns a young orphan who is taken under the wing of the orphanage's doctor. The orphan grows up learning the doctor's trade which includes delivering babies for unwed mothers (who become orphans) or performing illegal abortions for those who wish it (and burning the "leftovers" in an incinerator). The orphan does not think this is OK (for him) so he never does them, he only helps. eventually he leaves the orphanage to explore the real world. He meets a good friend (during his girlfriend's abortion), and later sleeps with this girlfriend while he is away at war. While working on an apple farm he befriends the local workers, one of whom sleeps with his own daughter. When the daughter gets pregnant . . .

[SPOILER WARNING!]

. . . the orphan realizes how narrow-minded he has been and that in real life you have to make your own rules. So he performs the abortion and goes back to the orphanage to take over for his doctor-mentor who has overdosed on drugs and died.

Suppositions

The story takes place in WWII era America - ironically the last generation to uphold strong moral virtues. The film's moral relativism is not hidden and is, in fact, the driving point of the whole film. More below.

Significance

This is one of the most emotionally manipulative movies I have ever seen. The message the film sends is blatant: we all have to decide for ourselves which laws apply. The title refers to the rules set by the owner of the house that the apple farm workers stay in during their work season. They do not follow these rules - laugh at them in fact - and in the end the orphan burns them showing his collapse into moral relativism. Every major character is a moral failure - from the drug addict murderer doctor to the cheating girlfriend to the incestuous father figure. Yet, each one is simply responding to every day "real life" pressures and does what they can to get by. They are all so charming that their evil just doesn't seem so important. And that's the point of the film - we need to judge people by who they really are in their life context and not by some arbitrary (read: objective) moral code. Of course this message is self-defeating for it claims that it would be wrong to call someone wrong. Overall the film is morally pathetic and emotionally manipulative. The best thing someone could do with the movie would be to show it in an ethics class to demonstrate how liberals base their morality on selfish convenience rather than truth or virtue and must use emotion-driven rhetoric to win their case when logic fails them.