O Pioneers!

I was looking at some other reviews of this and felt pressed to say, it rally was pretty good. Criticisms that it was predictable are a bit unfounded when you remember that this was based on Willa Cather's novel.She wrote it first. I enjoyed the production. It talked about how people make decisions that have consequences beyond their expectations. The affair between Marie and Emil is more about Marie's decision to marry who and when she did. These things could happen today. Still, the slice of life in for American settlers is what has always drawn me to Willa Cather's works. I think Hallmark's depiction is quite solid. Jessica Lange was a good choice for the lead. Her story could have been that of so many others. Nowadays we forget that this country was settled by people faced with different choices and harder lives than we face today.

Alternately tragic and triumphant story of Alexandra Bergson's love of the sometimes unwelcoming farmland of the southern Nebraska plains. Captures well the quiet tone of Willa Cather's best work--had she seen this, she might have rethought her (evidently ignored) demand in her will that her work not be adapted. All the performances are excellent, including early performances by Reed Diamond and Anne Heche as the doomed lovers Emil and Marie and one more in a lifetime of stealthily perfect turns by David Strathairn. But the whole enterprise depends on the broad, strong shoulders of Jessica Lange's Alexandra. Looking more than ever before like a beautiful, lanky, long-necked mare of a woman, Lange's spirit expands to fill the wide-open landscape. Don't expect a thriller when this comes up, but if you see it, you'll remember it forever.

Awesome story of how a woman takes over the ranch aft her father dies. Looking at it from a genealogical viewpoint of a genealogist's....I am so glad they made this excellent film. Stories such as this came from our ancestors for sure as such ocurrences actually did happen very often. Women were left to run many outfits when the men died or went wandering....they had the gusto, fortitude and fight to do it, thats why we are here today, because of these courageous ancestors. Nebraska is a gorgeous state and the scenery is truly depictive of it as I lived there. The culmination of the two childhood friends marrying, even though she was 4yrs his senior...happened all too often back in those days. Its a very emotional, heart beating film and well done. Jessica Lange is such a wonderful actress and did an excellent job in this film as did David Strathairn.

Jessica Lange went from the big screen to the small screen with her performance here. She is just excellent here as she is anywhere else including stage as well. Jessica Lange played the elder Alexandra Bergstrom. A young Heather Graham played the young Alexandra. She did an excellent job. Anne Heche had left "Another World" for other opportunities. This film highlighted her talent as an actress. David Straitharn played the elder Carl Lindstrom, the love of Alexandra's live. The film is kind of slow at times. The film was made for television. The ending of the film was a surprise since I haven't read the novel.

O Pioneers!" is a screen adaptation of Willa Cather's novel set in Nebraska at the turn of the century. It was originally shown on television as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame series.

Jessica Lange plays Alexandra Bergson, a competent and courageous woman whose dying father leaves her control of his failing farm. Over the years through shrewd management and persistence, she prospers. She has a mystical relationship with the land, a reverent approach she shares with a bare-footed hermit (Roberts Blossoms) who becomes her lifelong adviser and friend.

Filming in Nebraska, producer and director Glenn Jordan makes the prairie an important character in the drama. In one the most visually spectacular scenes, a group of Catholic men ride out in procession to escort a visiting bishop back to the church; it's a welcome today's clerics would certainly appreciate! O Pioneers! in many vivid and affecting ways proclaims the bounty which comes to those who respect nature and nurture it like a child. Yes I recommend it James Welch Henderson, Arkansas 2/8/2021