Cross Creek

No, I don't think Cross Creek will ever be put up there with Kane or Casablanca, but for some reason I made a connection with this movie the first time I saw it 20 years ago, and it remains one of my favorite films even today.

Every creative person goes through the struggle to find their voice, and Cross Creek is about a city-bred writer who runs away to the country to live an ascetic life with her typewriter. She expects her isolation and alienation to "prod the muses" but instead finds these new people and this new land to draw her in until they and it become the soul of her writing.

The natural, understated tone of the film allowed for a human resonance I've rarely seen in mainstream Hollywood fare. And while Mary Steenburgen and Peter Coyote are perfectly fine, Rip Torn and Alfre Woodard's performances absolutely floored me. They respectively brought Marsh Turner and Geechee to life with such abandon and clarity, it's some of the finest acting I've witnessed on film, period.

I revisit Cross Creek every few years and it always holds up stylistically (Leonard Rosenman's score is timeless). Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings symbolizes America itself, in my opinion, so concerned with pleasing its own, yet progressively exposed to a foreign world that ultimately will shape its real identity.

It's a universally human story and, like I said before, I really connect with this little film, and appreciate Director Martin Ritt's courage in making it the way he did. I can't guarantee that others will necessarily feel the same way, but I always recommend Cross Creek to friends, be they creatives or not.

There's a lot in Cross Creek that's excellent. Several fascinating performances create well-honed characterizations of complex, sometimes-likable characters.

The visuals are beautiful, mostly shot on location in Cross Creek. It certainly evokes this part of Florida. (I grew up about 25 miles from the setting.) Some negatives lower my rating. But despite these, I still highly recommend the film.

Though many like the score, I found it mostly sappy, the only exceptions being the music created by the characters.

Summer never seems to come. Once we see MKR wipe her brow. We get no sense of the oppression of the summer heat and humidity.

But likewise, winter never seems to come. For goodness sake, when you're lighting fires to protect orange trees, that's because it's FREEZING! Those orange trees won't be hurt above about 25F. And freezing weather in Florida is normally accompanied by wind. This may not seem like much to those who live farther north, but it requires more serious clothing than most of the characters don. Yet none seem to notice that it's cold. And MKR's house wouldn't have been so well heated that she could sleep in that weather with only light clothes and covers.

It never gets muddy. The movie shows some torrential downpours, yet when the characters get back out on the roads and paths, it's all dry and neat. That doesn't happen in the swamp.

And it never seems to get buggy. We hear a couple of mentions of mosquitoes but mostly they don't seem like a big problem. People just sit and walk around with no sign that they notice.

Film fans best know the work of Marjorie Kiniston Rawlings through the adaption of her best known work The Yearling and the later filming of an original story for the screen in The Sun Comes Up. Cross Creek is our opportunity to look inside the mind and character of the woman who was the creator of these classics.

As played beautifully by Mary Steenburgen, we meet Rawlings during the Twenties as a woman with a passion to go to the land and a burning desire to write. She's been submitting potboiler romance novels to publishers who keep telling her to reach for her soul in her writings.

Steenburgen divorces her husband and moves to some Florida swamp land which she by dint of her own hard work and the help of neighbors, she turns into a decent patch for an orange grove. One of them, storekeeper Peter Coyote, evinces more than a neighborly interest.

It's her letters from her town of Cross Creek that excite Steenburgen's potential publisher, Malcolm McDowell, the simple lives and dignity of her neighbors with all their flaws. Especially neighbor Rip Torn and his family, they become the models for the characters in The Yearling.

Cross Creek earned Academy Award nominations for Rip Torn as Best Supporting Actor and Alfre Woodard playing a black woman who Steenburgen takes in and works for her. Cross Creek also got nominations for Best Music Score and Costume Design. Why Mary Steenburgen wasn't nominated for Best Actress is a mystery.

One really ought to see Cross Creek back to back with The Sun Comes Up which was Rawlings original work for the screen and was Jeanette MacDonald's last film. Seeing Cross Creek puts a lot of The Sun Comes Up in context with MacDonald's character and with how Rawlings is interpreted by Steenburgen. Both films will take on a new dimension if anyone has not seen the other.

Cross Creek is one excellent piece of film making about the genesis of a great American writer.

'Cross Creek' (1983) The story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and her life in the backwoods Florida town of Cross Creek after moving there from New York in the 1930's to continue her writing. I have been a visitor to her home in Cross Creek and even today the area looks like it probably did 60 years ago. Mary Steenburgen does a nice job as the independent, hard drinking Rawlings and Peter Coyote is fine as Norton Baskin, who eventually became her husband. Nicely photographed with a lovely musical score, 'Cross Creek'is a slow, easy going movie and the viewer will enjoy the people in Ms. Rawlings life, particularly the always steady Rip Torn and the late Dana Hill. An enjoyable experience.

This is a gentle movie that reflects the pace of life for old Florida in a way that settles in my soul and brings back my childhood. Cross Creek looks deeply into a different lifestyle that actually still existed less than 50 years ago. In my childhood, Florida was a slow paced, slice of something that had ceased to exist else-country. Though the extremes may have seemed harsh, this movie captures the sweet taste of pre-Disney Florida, and the best part of the movie for me (even though I agree with the accolades for the acting, photography, etc.) is that Cross Creek is still there. You can go to Orange Lake and take a step backwards in time. This is my Florida, and I will always love it.