Crucible’s complex picture
The beginning of Crucible, the writer and Oscar-nominated director John Sayles’s eighth novel, opens with a feint. A couple of journalists are taken for a mock-perilous test drive at the presentation of Henry Ford’s latest automobile. On their return, what starts as a humorous Q&A becomes increasingly restrictive as it becomes clear there is to be one narrative only: the company’s, or rather, the founder’s. This familiar combination of showmanship and control may feel ubiquitous now, but the audacity of Ford and the outrage he provoked was to change the face of American industry. Crucible moves between two narratives, both involving rivers: the lives of those at the vast River
