Mas allá del destino

I didn't actually have high hopes for this film because I had read some critics reviews when it first came out. I have not read the novel either. I thought the film was very well done and was moved by it. I agree that many of the supporting characters are underdeveloped but I could overlook that because I knew what was motivating the main characters. The two lead actresses are brilliant, especially Jessica Lange, who deserved an Oscar nomination for this. I loved the way her character slowly changed through the movie and Lange can evoke so much emotion in the viewer with something as small as a hand gesture. Pfieffer is strong as well although the story mainly revolves around Ginny and I don't really see why Pfieffer gets first billing here. I strongly recommend the film, espeically on dvd.

A Jane Smiley novel, loosely based on Shakespeare's KING LEAR about the Cook family and its dark secrets. Director Moorhouse seems tamed in her approach, allowing the characters to step forward and take a bow. And how could you go wrong with the talents of Pfeiffer, Lange, Leigh, Firth, Carradine and Robards?

The two primary questions I use in evaluating a film are: "Is it a story worth telling?", and "is it a story well told?" When I apply these questions to Jocelyn Morehouse's A Thousand Acres (adapted from the novel by Jane Smiley), the answers are: yes, yes and no. The basic story is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear. This story provides fertile soil for a tragic, but compelling story as told in Jane Smiley's novel as she moves the setting of the story to the cornfields of Iowa.

This revisionist King Lear has an aging farmer (played by two-time Oscar winner Jason Robards) proposing to divide his farm among his three daughters as a way of minimizing the costs of inheritance taxes. The youngest daughter expresses some reservations, and is immediately cut out of the partnership. When the farm is divided between the other two daughters, the stage is set for a tragedy of epic proportions. As the story unfolds, the family relations are strained and broken by greed, betrayal, death, abuse, miscommunication, and ghosts from the past.

When Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer read Jane Smiley's novel, they purchased the screen rights. Women are at the center of this project from beginning to end. This is actually somewhat refreshing, since Hollywood is not known for sensitivity in its portrayal of females or in its understanding of female viewpoints. Unfortunately, this has led some to dismiss the film as a "chick flick." While there are no male characters in the film for whom we feel much compassion or sympathy, the film is really about Ginny (as played by Jessica Lange). If the viewer follows the dramatic arc of this character, it is easier to find the heart of this film.

Finding the heart of the film appears to be a problem. Roger Ebert gave the film two stars (out of a possible four), Owen Glieberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a letter grade of F. Others--myself included--liked it a bit better than that.

The film is clearly not without its problems. Film adaptations are difficult because richly textured stories must be trimmed and abridged to fit a two-hour time span for the typical film. Most of the criticisms of A Thousand Acres revolve around underdeveloped characters, subplots left hanging, and unclear story lines. I suspect some of this is the result of commercial tampering and trimming by the producers. Some of the blame clearly goes to director Jocelyn Morehouse who doesn't do enough to help us care about some of the characters. When tragedy strikes, it is almost as if we are reading about strangers in a newspaper.

The performances by Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer (Pfeiffer plays the second sister, Rose) are so compelling that the film remains engaging in spite of its flaws. Jessica Lange gives what may be the performance of her already Oscar-rich career (Tootsie and Blue Sky). This is a different kind of role for Pfeiffer and she clearly rises to the occasion. A Thousand Acres is worth seeing if you are interested in a good story that comes close to being well told.

Given the way the film begins - lots of slow tracking shots of the thousand acres - I expected this to be a dull but worthy effort only brightened by Michelle Pfeiffer (the reason I bought the tape). To an extent this was true - Pfeiffer's character was by far the most interesting. Her anger throughout, although utterly justified, carried an air of self-destruction and manipulation that made the story most watchable. There were points when I wondered if the film was going to miss any tragedian tricks (perhaps I mean soap opera headlines: death, abandonment, loss with no true deliverance, etc), but it was the believability of Pfeiffer and the ugly familiness achieved by the rest of the cast that carried it, showing peaks of humanity through the weight of the film's atmosphere.

'A Thousand Acres' is one of the best books I've ever read and one of the worst movies I've ever seen, so obviously something was lost in the adaptation. On-set reports claimed that the director was trying to change the story radically while stars Lange and Pfeiffer attempted to keep it closer to the book. The director seems to have won out.

It's really a shame, because you couldn't ask for a better cast to bring 'Acres' to life. Jason Robards is dead-on as Larry, the psychologically damaged patriarch, and Lange, Pfeiffer, and Leigh have great chemistry as the three sisters. But good actors need good lines, and the screenplay doesn't give them any. The approach taken by the writer and director toward adapting Jane Smiley's brilliant, Pulitzer-prize winning novel seems to have been to simply stick all the dramatic, important scenes together and leave out the nuances and character development that made the story so special.

In fairness, 'Acres' couldn't have been easy to adapt; it has more than enough scope to make a movie trilogy or an entire series of television. Perhaps it was a mistake, then, to try to keep the beginning, middle and end essentially the same as the book. This approach shows us all the effects and none of the causes. Especially confusing is the scant 105 minute running time, which is only slightly longer than your average Adam Sandler movie. If the director and studio had been willing to make this a 3-hour film, it might have had a chance. As it stands, the movie plays like a highlight reel of the book, and that's not enough to involve the viewer emotionally.

'A Thousand Acres' is a fantastic story, though the movie would try hard to convince you otherwise. Pick up the book and see for yourself.