Well I was eagerly anticipating this movie. “Catcher in the Rye” has stuck with me since 6th grade when I read it.
I felt connected to Holden Caulfield as I know many millions of people around the world have. I also read Franny And Zooey. Which I also loved and found myself in love with the Glass family. I never read “9 Stories” or “Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenter.” But I hear they are good as well.
Watching this movie was sad. It was getting a look at a hero of mine and finding out that he was covered in body lice and just lived to spread that around to as many people that he could.
I feel the movie fell off point many times. The filmmaker and other authors even, kept saying how WWII created Holden and Catcher and without them it would have never been written. I disagree, since Salinger had 6 chapters of Catcher with him when he stormed the beaches at Normandy. Yes the war messed him up mentally. Yes he saw atrocities. Yes he was heart broken. But he was also a major perv. Always desiring women between the ages of 14-18 or women who looked like that.
Even when he had a woman he was busy writing endless love letters to young women all over the country. Maybe if he had spent more time on his books they would have been done sooner.
I guess it doesn’t take away from his body of work that he was such a jerk but it muddies it a bit for me.
The film was good enough. Frankly it was cut together like it was meant to air on Television as a part of a 3 or 4 part mini-series. But very informative.
