A Thousand Acres
*
Cinema
Releases - June 19,
1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse. Written by Laura Jones; based
on the novel by Jane Smiley. Starring
Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jason Robards,
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Colin Firth, Keith Carradine, Kevin Anderson, Pat
Hingle.
I hear that "A Thousand Acres" is
supposed to be a reworking of Shakespeare's "King Lear", but the film is
so muddled, unfocused and mismanaged that I didn't make the connection. As
such, I shall pretend that there is none, and review it at its ugly face
value.
The film takes place in American farm country,
and Larry Cook (Jason Robards) is an aging farmer who owns the title stretch,
and who tells his three daughters -- Ginny(Jessica Lange), Rose(Michelle
Pfeiffer) and Caroline(Jennifer Jason Leigh) -- that they can divide it up
between themselves, as long as they take care of it. Oh, his daddy and granddaddy
farmed it from nothing, you see! In his own nonsensical words: "Ya gotta
understand, they built the tiles! They built the tiles!"
Oh, this film is a goody bag of nonsensical lines.
My favourite is this exchange:
--I've only ever slept with Ty.
--Ooh, I know what that means!
--Maybe you do…maybe you
don't…
It's unclear who the main character is supposed
to be in "A Thousand Acres", although there is a narration by Lange's character.
Wait -- did I say narration? Oh, silly me, I made it sound like the voice-over
had a purpose, when it is just ramblings interfering with what's onscreen,
and, at times, describing what we can quite plainly see.
The significance of conversations is also unclear,
not that I wanted to pay attention to them anyway. The dialogue is hopelessly
unrealistic, with these slow yokels suddenly turning into snappy, witty,
modern, sophisticated jokers for a few minutes now and again before returning
back to their moronic former states.
Lange's character is the dopiest of these people,
and her Ginny is simply an annoying idiot. She is also undeserving of the
sympathy which her eyes and the music score ask for -- she is the kind of
woman who deserts her husband and kids because she had an affair.
That affair, by the way, although leading to crucial plot developments, is
a cheesy cop-out of a way to do so, an irrelevant detour for a writer who
doesn't have a grasp on her material.
Neither do the filmmakers. The film is so muddled
(forgive me if I'm repeating myself) that when Leigh's character gets married
we hardly realise that it's her, we are not told who the husband is, and
the detail of the marriage, which should be rather important, is not touched
upon for the rest of the film.
Another important detail, the
not-too-surprising-when-it-comes revelation that Robards was sexually abusing
his daughters as children, leads to a scene which could have been intense,
until the film cops out again with a stupid explanation in dialogue of what's
obvious onscreen and another cheesy sidetrack.
If "A Thousand Acres" can't keep a hold of its
plot, it doesn't even try with its characters. They keep switching their
nature to and fro for the film's interminable length, a film which is written
so ineptly, that like "Mad City", one wonders how on earth talented actors
got involved. Even the brilliant Jason Robards is at the bottom of his form.
His expression of misery is usually effective, but when put on for two hours
nonstop, it gets tiresome. One scene in which he rants and raves dementedly
in a courtroom had me in stitches, although it was supposed to be
dramatic.
That's all I'm writing. Enter "A Thousand Acres"
at your own risk. This movie has been dealt so many problems by such incompetent
handling, that next time a film directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse opens that
hasn't had sizzling word of mouth, I'm either refusing to review it or giving
up film criticism.
COPYRIGHT©
1998 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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