If you are a well-molded product of today's remote-control McCulture, then you will stop reading my article if this sentence doesn't immediately catch your eye. And if I'm lucky enough to write a winner with that first sentence, I'll have to consistently generate sentences loaded with sense-numbing, cliff-hanging, page-turning, juiced-up, hyper-amped words - simply to keep you reading.
Welcome to life in 1997, where our country's best-selling magazine is "TV Guide," and our largest circulating newspaper is the "National Enquirer." Where Oprah Winfrey is our highest-paid entertainer and everything is a Surge commercial. Where remote control features rise while attention spans fall. Welcome to our pop-culture.
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| Jessica Lange stars in the film adaptation of Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres." |
The King Lear-esque tale follows the saga of the Cook Family, headed by the tyrannical patriarch Larry Cook (Jason Robards). We meet the Cooks just before Larry decides to distribute his huge farm (you guess the size) among his three grown daughters: Ginny (Jessica Lange), Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Caroline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). The apportioned land viciously divides the family, which causes many long-guarded secrets and unspoken rivalries to be revealed.
Among the many secrets unearthed by Larry's impulsively misguided decision are incest, miscarriage, breast cancer, spousal abuse, sibling rivalry, death, adultery and many other deadly sins. Standing alone, each one of these issues could produce a solid movie, but when heaped together in 104 minutes, the issues cheat each other, and end up making the characters look like talk-show guests. Of course, this problem does not lie with the storyteller, but with the chosen medium - film.
Jane Smiley is an excellent author, and a master storyteller. Director Jocelyn Moorhouse is a talented filmmaker with a good cinematic eye. And the actors themselves, all four of whom have superb acting credentials and the Academy Awards to back them up, do a fine job. Jessica Lange does an especially fine job. She portrays the emotionally dynamic Ginny with a simpleton's authenticity, while pulling off lines like "I was a ninny" with touching grace. No, don't blame these people for "A Thousand Acres"' disappointing result - blame yourselves.
Well, maybe not yourselves, exactly, rather audiences in general. When Moorhouse had finished shooting and everyone was pleased, the studio execs thought they'd simply give the film a test run before releasing it. When the test screening audiences responded with belly-aches about the movie being too slow and too long, the executive producers decided to cut more than 45 minutes of the film so that it could be released at the easy-to-swallow time of 104 minutes.
Unfortunately, this is common practice in the studio system. For instance, Polygram execs recently tried to cut large portions of Robert Altman's take on Grisham's "The Gingerbread Man" before releasing it this fall. Infuriated, Altman threatened to remove his name from the project, thereby scaring his producers into allowing his original cut to be released. Sadly, Moorhouse does not have this kind of directorial clout.
Even without knowing this movie's history, it's obvious to most viewers that what we see on the big screen is nowhere near the original director's cut. Tragedy jumps to tragedy with little background or character development. The plot seems to roll along like a "to-do list" being efficiently checked off, with each event occurring quickly and simply, with little development or repercussion. We find ourselves asking "what's at stake?" How can we sympathize with these characters if we don't know a thing about them?
This film reduces the complexity of Smiley's original characters - characters you cheer for and against, simultaneously - into cliché depictions of good feuding with evil. The feelings in the book are sloppy, while the emotion comes pre-packaged in the film, with neat little spots for every feeling. Toss out the vacuum pack and pass my bib - I can spare another 45 minutes.
That is, if it's a worthwhile 45 minutes. There's a good chance that, while the extra time could have filled in many of the characters' seams, it wouldn't have saved this movie. Because it is based on a good novel, it may have been doomed from the start.
The list of good books turned into bad movies is lengthy: "Bonfire of the Vanities," "Bright Lights, Big City," "Revenge," "Crash." All movies that bombed because they deal with complex, emotional conflict, and rely on character, not necessarily events, for plot. Now consider books that have translated into successful films: "Legends of the Fall," "The Shawshank Redemption," "The English Patient." These stories rely on character and conflict too, but they rely on climax and resolution more. But more important, these stories are simply shorter. "Legends" is a novella, "Shawshank" is a short story, and "The English Patient" is based on only one portion of the acclaimed novel. Unlike these films, "A Thousand Acres" bites off more than it can chew, and chokes and sputters because of it.
Pfeiffer and Lange are sisters with too much history and emotional baggage.
09-23-97
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