Territory around eighteen-fifty - how young women went crazy from the
loss of their children from the harsh elements -- or how they lost a
mom that their husband had to drag out in the coldest weather with
scarcely a decent burial - or how a mom had to dispose of a child--
who's starving -- by pitching him into a hole in the outhouse- I find it
hard to grieve their grief. These hurts are horrible, yet we've seen so
much bad in our round-the-world coverage -- twenty-four-hours-a-day --
that such trials don't sink in.
It's a shame it's gotten to this,
but we must have a well-wrought story with that brand of dialogue that
makes us cry- or grants us empathy that turns us from someone who isn't
touched to one who is. And then our emotions creep upon us and we are
hooked and caught in the film's web. Instead: in this film, we see some
folks suffering while others try to do just things; but all through the
haze of it we're not caught in its spell.
Hilary Swank plays a
thirty-one year old brave settler in a scratch of a town called Loup.
She's from New York but has ventured out in this far Hell and had some
success acquiring land, building a house, farming with her mules and
horses, and sustaining herself to build up pride as well as some town
folk's respect. But she hankers to wed, and being a plain hardscrabble
woman, she's not asking for the perfect fellow. Yet each time she
bridges the theme to the man before her, she gets a "No" answer.
Then
Fate offers her something else when the town's Reverent Alfred Dowd,
played by John Lithgow, asks for a "homesman" who will conduct three
insane young women eastward to Iowa where they'll receive help to get
them back to where they can live life sanely. None of the men will
volunteer for the arduous five week's journey through winter's hardship
as well as Indian butchery or capture. Swank's character, Mary Bee
Cuddy, says she will do it. People scoff, but admit that she is as tough
as men for the job.
As she's about to set off with the three
demented women in a make-shift jail of a carriage wagon, she discovers a
guy sitting on his horse with a rope around his neck. One move of the
horse: and the fellow will be hanged. She bargains with him-- he's
George Briggs-- played by Tommy Lee Jones. Her deal is: she cuts the
rope, and he gets roped into the journey with her and the female cargo
inside. Now begins the essence of the film and the difficult
acquaintanceship it breeds.
Certainly the bigger-than-man awesome
elements they see and endure are quite impressive and worth witnessing.
But am I really hooked in to all of their plights? Maybe two: a fight
between an intruder who tries to entice one mad woman... and a tense
scene between a group of Indians... but that really isn't enough to keep
me in the challenge here.
Towards the third quarter or so of the
film, there is a laconic romantic-less scene between George Briggs and
Miss Mary Bee Cuddy. It has no pulse and scant meaning. And then the
surprise scene that follows really turned me into a psychiatrist- want
to-be--as I tensed my brain to understand how such a thing could have
happened. Were the screen writers-all three: Wesley Oliver, Tommy Lee
Jones and Kieran Fitzgerald playing tricks with gullibility? It was
baffling. And from there the final lap of the trip is readily secured.
Finally,
George brings the ladies to the place where Altha Carter (played by
Meryl Streep) greets them warmly. The few minutes when Tommy Lee Jones
and Meryl Streep communicate are probably the most moving (to me) in the
whole film. Here are two people-far apart on the spiritual scale--
bringing to each other's inner grasp of rightness a palpable
achievement-sense. How amazing it is when two great actors are given a
script at the part of the tale that needs closure; and they do what's
needed!
I say again and again, that we go to the movies to
experience a plot that holds us for two hours. That's really all we ask.
We do not want to be reminded of how hard life was on the Nebraska
plains. We are okay with the brilliant scenes photographed by Rodrigo
Prieto. There's great talent in that. But everything's secondary to what
the story is. Once it's over, we get up and get on with our day's life.
If it's an early film, we may go to dinner. If it's later, we just go
home. If the film shows something we can talk about, we'll surely enjoy
doing that, too. But if--after seeing a picture like this-all we can do
is try to sort out the confused feelings we have--instead of praising
the overall effect of it-- then there's the sense that the opportunity
of hearing-seeing a great story is lost among all the effort that went
in it. Tommy Lee Jones-besides his co-starring and co-writing--was the
film's director. My grade for all that effort: SIX.
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