Florence Pugh and Hoon Lee Form the Beating Heart of Netflix’s Rich ‘East of Eden’ Adaptation: TV Review

“East of Eden,” the John Steinbeck novel, opens with a place: the author’s native Salinas Valley, the fertile terrain transitioning from the nation’s frontier to its bread basket at the turn of the 20th century. “East of Eden,” the Netflix limited series created by actor and screenwriter Zoe Kazan, opens with a person: Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh), the Eve and Satanic temptress of Steinbeck’s explicit Biblical allegory. “I believe there are monsters born to human parents,” Cathy intones — transplanting Steinbeck’s introduction of his most iconic villain into the mouth of the woman it describes.

This rearrangement doubles as a statement of purpose. Kazan’s adaptation of the literary classic, overseen in partnership with co-showrunner Jeb Stuart (writer of “Die Hard” and “The Fugitive”), is faithful — arguably even more so than the 1955 film directed by her grandfather Elia, previously the book’s best-known screen version. (The feature zeroes in on the final phase of a multigenerational epic, while this series takes on the whole thing.) But emphases and points of view are rearranged to elevate two characters in particular: Cathy, as indicated by the show’s marketing and advance press, and Lee (Hoon Lee), the Chinese American cook whose added dimensions emerge more gradually. These dual portraits aren’t consistently or equally successful, but combined with a lush production and a stellar cast, they’re a case for bringing Steinbeck’s enduring tale of free will, original sin and cyclical tragedy into the 21st century.

Pugh was an Oscar nominee by her late 20s for her performance in another high-profile adaptation, Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women.” She’s nonetheless spent the last few years without a role quite deserving of her talents. (Getting beamed up into the Marvel machine will do that to a young actor.) Though largely a film star, Pugh had previously done some of her finest work on television, in Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook’s 2018 take on John Le Carré’s “The Little Drummer Girl.” Watching “East of Eden,” which Pugh also executive produced, it’s apparent what called her back to the small screen: In Cathy, she gets a character who’s constantly calculating as her position shifts over decades, from vulnerable girl to reluctant wife to skilled prostitute to grizzled madam. And making hidden depths legible on the surface is some of what Pugh does best.

A teenage Cathy arrives, beaten and bloody, on the Connecticut doorstep of half-brothers Adam (Christopher Abbott) and Charles Trask (Mike Faist), whose own psychodrama is already well under way. Pit against one another by their father Cyrus (Tracy Letts), a Civil War veteran obsessed with molding his sons into a soldier (Adam) and a farmer (Charles) despite either boy’s natural instincts, the Trasks are already in possession of the emotional inheritance they’ll soon pass on to the next generation. But we see them first through Cathy’s eyes, which burn with an animal intelligence even through a mosaic of bruises and scabs. Adam, simple and trusting, is an easy mark for a desperate woman looking for a life raft. Charles, canny and discerning, is a threat — and maybe a kindred spirit.

Pugh is fantastic in these early episodes, which establish Cathy as a kind of psychopath in the clinical sense — a creature of instinct who sees any threat to her agency, from parental discipline to full-blown abuse, as a lethal attack to be repaid with interest. Watching her operate is akin to Scarlett Johansson’s performance as a man-eating alien in the 2013 film “Under the Skin”: Cathy operates less out of malice than an innate, unchangeable essence. When she likens her marriage to something that “can be slipped out of, like a poorly made knot,” we understand how inimical she is to any kind of constraint, legal or otherwise. That her means of exit is abandoning her newborn twins is less than sympathetic, but in a different era Cathy would have options beyond a domesticity that never suited her in the first place.

As the series continues, however, Kazan plays up the explanatory power of an incident from Cathy’s childhood. If Steinbeck believes monsters are born, Kazan seems to be of the school that they’re made. The origin story helps contextualize the misery and self-isolation of Cathy’s later years, as the madam of a Salinas whorehouse. But it also abates the singular ferocity of her early characterization, and concedes to the viewer’s need to find humanity in her. You don’t need to like, or even find a neat cause-and-effect, for Cathy to marvel at her claiming agency at any cost.

Kazan has said she originally intended for “East of Eden” to run for eight episodes, and there’s some palpable compression in the seven ultimately produced. (Another cost-cutting measure moved the production to New Zealand. While it’s sad to miss out on authentic California landscapes in a story so rooted in geography, cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh gets some stunning, sun-dappled vistas out of the islands’ rolling hills.) “Challengers” star Faist is a surprisingly minimal presence once newlyweds Adam and Cathy set out for Northern California; even before, we don’t get to know Charles well enough for his theory that “kind recognizes kind” in Cathy to resonate. Nor do we get much time with the teenage versions of the couple’s sons Cal (Joseph Zada) and Aaron (Joe Anders) to deepen them beyond vessels for their ancestors’ baggage.

But it’s also clear what Kazan wanted to make space for. Cathy’s ingratiation with, and eventual usurpation of, brothel owner Faye (Martha Plimpton) gets an entire episode. So does an extended interlude with Lee co-written by novelist Alexander Chee, the only installment on which Kazan does not have sole script credit. As in the novel, Lee is an educated and empathetic soul who observes society from its margins. Born in America to railroad workers, Lee speaks in a thickly accented pidgin around racist strangers who expect it of him. Behind closed doors, though, he debates philosophy with neighbor Samuel Hamilton (Ciarán Hinds, so warm you wouldn’t know his role is downsized from the text) and studies the Bible. This pursuit makes Lee the voice of the story’s central theme: timshel, a Hebrew word from the legend of Cain and Abel (or Charles and Adam, or Caleb and Aaron) that translates to “thou mayest” — not “thou shalt,” emphasizing individual choice over unalterable fate.

In keeping with the concept, this Lee gets more of his own arc, driven by his own decisions and developed enough to rival his employers for the center of the show. There are more details about his parents, a sojourn into San Francisco’s bustling Chinatown and an assertion of autonomy within the Trask household, of which Lee is an essential part. The gender dynamics of Adam and Lee’s arrangement in the season’s latter half are fascinating: as cook, gardener, bookkeeper and active parent, Lee is functionally the twins’ surrogate mother, a fact “East of Eden” never states outright but instead subtly insists on. Hoon Lee is not as famous as Pugh, nor does his character burn as brightly as Cathy’s hatred for societal norms. Yet his calm, quietly wounded demeanor is just as essential to the show, and the way Lee grows more complex over time offsets the way Cathy is somewhat simplified.

Were “East of Eden” merely a sumptuous period piece, it would still be event viewing, the kind of somber-toned release that announces the onset of Fall TV. Directors Garth Davis (“Lion”) and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (“The Mustang”) join a crew of artisans, including production designer Grant Major, costume designer Kirsty Cameron and score composer Laura Karpman, in conjuring a moment in time as specific as the Genesis story is universal. By the episodes’ end, I wasn’t totally convinced a narrative so dependent on the passage of time was an organic fit for the screen. (Pugh gets aged up with cosmetics, but Abbott looks as boyish as ever while Adam attempts to act as patriarch.) Still, the endeavor feels worth it for Pugh and Lee’s standout efforts, which etch their characters deep into one’s memory. Even great books can acquire dust on the shelf; an infusion of feeling helps keep them alive.

All seven episodes of “East of Eden” are now streaming on Netflix.