11.22.63 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

11.22.63 Blu-ray Movie Review

The Past: Recaptured or Revised?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 19, 2016

"History", said James Joyce's alter ego in Ulysses, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." In 11.22.63, a Hulu original miniseries adapted from Stephen King's novel of the same name, the hero tries to awaken from one of modern America's recurring historical nightmares, only to discover that history, like a dreamer's unconscious, has a will and a logic all its own. Hulu released eight weekly episodes of 11.22.63 beginning on February 15, 2016, and the entire series is now available on Blu-ray from Warner.

Jake Epping (James Franco, who co-produced the series and directed an episode) is a high school English teacher in Lisbon, Maine, who feels adrift after a recent divorce and his father's death. His lack of connection makes him an ideal candidate for a peculiar task urged upon him by his friend, Al Templeton (Chris Cooper), owner of the local diner. The mission: Go back in time, stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy and thereby prevent the Vietnam War, which Al blames on Kennedy's successor and in which he fought and lost many friends.

The mechanism permitting this unlikely project is a time portal that Al has discovered in one of the diner's closets. He calls it "the rabbit hole", and it always leads back to the same moment on October 21, 1960. One can remain in the past for years, but when you re-enter from the other side, only two minutes have elapsed. After multiple excursions, Al has amassed an extensive file on Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, but he still hasn't been able to confirm whether Oswald acted alone. Now dying of terminal cancer, Al begs Jake to complete what he started.

You would think that anyone even remotely familiar with pop culture's array of cautionary tales about the risks of time travel would hesitate before tinkering with the past. But like so many who have studied JFK's assassination, Al has disappeared down his own private rabbit hole of obsession, and he quickly pulls Jake into it. Gathering Al's files, the young teacher departs for 1960, where he attempts to blend in while following Al's leads, investigating Oswald and trying to prevent Kennedy's death on November 22, 1963.

A key device of 11.22.63 is the notion that the past resists change and "pushes back" against anyone trying to alter it, much like a temporal immune system. Sure enough, Jake's efforts are met with a host of obstacles, some explainable as random accidents—vehicles that won't start, a fire that destroys key evidence, traffic mishaps, a cockroach infestation—but others that remain mysterious, like the man with a yellow card in his hatband (Kevin J. O'Connor), who appears at odd moments warning Jake that "you're not supposed to be here". Even more insidious are the obstacles that Jake creates for himself by becoming involved with those he encounters. A partnership with a Kentucky man, Bill Turcotte (George McKay), whom Jake meets on his journey from Maine to Texas, proves to be both a help and a hindrance. His romantic involvement with Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon), the luminous librarian at the Texas high school where Jake secures a teaching post, sends him on detours from his mission that become especially perilous when Sadie's estranged and abusive husband (T.R. Knight) tracks her down. Even the "sure thing" bets that Jake places on sporting events of which he already knows the outcome lead to unforeseen results.

11.22.63 deftly mixes fictional characters with real historical figures. The latter include Gen. Edwin Walker (Gregory North), an anti-communist crusader and Kennedy opponent, who was the target of an attempted assassination in April 1963, presumably by Oswald; James Hosty (Gil Bellows), the FBI agent assigned to investigate Oswald after his return from Russia in June 1962; George de Mohrenschildt (Jonny Coyne), a Russian geologist whose friendship with Oswald has been the subject of much speculation; Oswald's doting mother, Marguerite (Cherry Jones); and his Russian bride, Marina (Lucy Fry), who quickly grows disenchanted with her new husband. But among the historical characters, the standout is Oswald himself, who is played by actor Daniel Webber with a mixture of menace and laughable bravado carefully calibrated to keep you guessing right until the end whether you're looking at an assassin or, as Oswald later claimed, a patsy. (He also nails Oswald's peculiar speech patterns and indefinable accent.)

The miniseries format suits King's sprawling novel, which, even with the adaptation's expansive running time of over seven hours, had to be radically trimmed. The countdown to the moment when JFK's motorcade will take its fateful route through Dealey Plaza provides an effective engine of suspense, as title cards routinely inform us of the date and Jake has to invent ever more desperate strategies to avoid being sidetracked. The longer format also allows 11.22.63 to explore the early Sixties milieu, meticulously re-created by production designer Carol Spier with a nostalgic surface sheen. For Jake, the era has both good points (food tastes better) and bad (the equipment he uses to surveil Oswald is laughably clumsy). He also has to deal with the era's overt racism, which first confronts him when he inadvertently heads for a "colored only" restroom and is immediately warned off.

11.22.63 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

11.22.63 was digitally shot (on the Red Epic Dragon, according to IMDb) by Adam Suschitsky, who has extensive credits in British TV, and David Katznelson (Downton Abbey). Following a practice that has become well-established in British TV, the image has been formatted at 2.00:1 with small letterbox bars, presumably for a more "cinematic" style. (I did not watch the series on Hulu but have been advised that it was streamed at this same aspect ratio.) Warner has divided the series' eight episodes over two 1080p, AVC-encoded BD-50s. At its best, the image reflects the usual virtues of digital capture, with sharp focus, copious fine detail and only occasional instances of aliasing (e.g., the first suit that Jake acquires upon his arrival to the past, which has a multi-colored weave that proves too much for the encoder). In darker scenes, the image tends to be softer and fine detail falls off, but this appears to be a deliberate choice intended to emulate film noir.

The past has a richer and more colorful palette than the present, which is less a comment on the era than on the mind-set of the story's hero, who is adrift in the present but quickens with a sense of purpose once he embarks on his task.

Continuing its customary authoring practices, Warner's TV division has mastered 11.22.63 with an average bitrate of 15.92 Mbps, while leaving substantial unused space (between 9 and 12 GB) on each disc.

11.22.63 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

11.22.63 arrives with an immersive 5.1 soundtrack encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. The surrounds are used effectively to enhance the typical "what's out there in the dark?" moments that appear in nearly every Stephen King story, and they also provide environmental ambiance, which can be subtle or distinct, given the locale. Dynamic range is broad, with solid bass extension, and major effects such as car crashes and gunshots register with authority. The dialogue is always clear, even with a variety of regional accents. The suspenseful theme and score are credited to Alex Heffes (State of Play), and the sound design often shifts the musical accompaniment toward the rear of the soundstage, so that it seems to be slightly separate from the action onscreen. This is an especially effective technique with the many period pop tunes by artists ranging from the Shirelles to Sinatra, which often sound like they are emanating from an unseen window or car radio (though with much better fidelity than early Sixties technology could have mustered).

11.22.63 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• When the Future Fights Back: (1080p; 1.78:1; 15:13): Though relatively short, this making-of featurette is remarkably comprehensive, featuring interviews with author Stephen King, screenwriter and executive producer Bridget Carpenter, executive producer J.J. Abrams and numerous members of the cast and crew. Subjects include the changes from page to screen, casting the miniseries, the story's underlying themes and the challenges of accurately re-creating one of the most famous and studied events of the 20th Century. The featurette also incorporates a variety of period news clips.

11.22.63 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of 11.22.63's many achievements is its use of traditional mechanisms of suspense to evoke a national trauma. As we watch events bearing down on Jake, who seems increasingly out of his depth, we naturally root for him to succeed in altering the past and sparing the country a tragedy that still reverberates today. At the same time, we can't help but question Al's faith that the world would be a better place if Kennedy had survived. History is a warren of interconnected causes, and the connections are often impossible to discern. Maybe the past has good reason for "pushing back" against those who would alter it. Maybe it knows better. Despite some minor video qualms, highly recommended.