Category: Sissy Spacek

THE RIVER

By Marc S. Sanders

A film like Mark Rydell’s The River only thrives on witnessing the misery of people living with the misery of others.  That’s not to say this is not how ordinary people are often forced to live.  There’s too much suffering in the world.  I can never deny that.  A homeless shelter or a prison are settings of great misfortune, hardship and sadness.  Yet for a movie, sometimes you must ask what the point is, especially when it is apparent that the heroes are destined to lose against the forces of nature while the villain is entirely correct in his own cause.  Sometimes in a no-win situation it is honorable to just give up.  I wish Tom Garvey, the corn farmer, would have just quit being a farmer and sought a better life for his wife Mae and their two young children.

Tom and Mae are played by Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek.  He is the current generation who owns the Tennessee corn crop farm that his family lineage has passed down.  The first twenty minutes of The River depict the harshness of terrible rainstorms that flood the nearby river and wash away the family’s prized crops and land.  Tom, Mae and the children do everything in their power to recede the water as the rain continues to come down in buckets.  Mae fills up sacks of mud and water with their daughter Beth.  Their son Lewis works with Tom on the beat-up tractor against a never-ending battle of plowing the flood waters away from the land.  There’s no way to overcome this terrible plague of weather that comes at least twice every year.  As I watch the sopping wet struggle that opens the picture in the middle of a stormy night, shot very well by Rydell and his crew, I already ask myself what’s the point?  Get out of this situation Tom!!!!! Take up babysitting, tutor, become a fireman, go back to school.  Relocate for heaven’s sakes!!!!

What recuses the Garvey family and the farm, one more time, is when the rain finally stops.

Scott Glenn is Joe Wade.  He is a wealthy industrialist, who also grew up in these parts under a family legacy.  Joe is on the good side of the state politicians and is aggressive in buying out the farmers’ land so that he can flood the valley, build a dam and use the overabundance of water to power the utilities of the area in a more efficient and much less costly way for everyone.  And he’s the villain of the story????????

Joe makes sense.  Tom’s passion for holding on to what his family has owned does not.  I get the idea of grasping on to family heirlooms like my grandfather’s watch that he maybe kept hidden in an uncomfortable orifice while being held captive by the Nazis, or the prized jewel that survived a shipwreck generations ago.  I also understand the desire to carry the torch of the harsh labor a father and a father before endured and died for while allowing a farm to thrive.  Yet, there are children to feed and debts to pay. The ruin that comes from the acts of God do not empathize.  Therefore, I say again, sometimes the bravest and most sensible thing a person can do is actually quit.

Tom, along with most of the neighboring farmers, are adamant about not selling their land to Joe.  When auctions occur to sell off the equipment and leftover supplies of the few that do surrender, it is practically considered a gross violation of a sacred code in these parts.  I look at the stubborn folks who frown upon their peers as terribly disrespectful.  The script is expecting me to empathize with Tom and those who stand with him though. 

Midway through, The River takes a detour as Tom leaves to do hard labor elsewhere to earn much needed cash.  This is where misery does not love company.   He is one of many men selected to do factory work as an inexpensive replacement for the union workers on strike.  Tom, along with the other recruits, are threatened, called scabs, and in a glaring scene spit directly in the face.  A fellow worker is beat up in the middle of the night.  All of this is powerful footage and yet who am I supposed to empathize with?  These workers on strike are demanding better benefits and rights.  A guy like Tom, who values the survival of the Garvey farm, interferes in someone else’s just cause for his own welfare. 

I think about films like Schindler’s List and even The Lord Of The Rings fantasies and I witness the hardships and suffering of a collective people.  Those stories never expect me to value the misery of a select few over others.  I take stock in a whole populace.  In Mark Rydell’s film, however, I feel like I’m only asked to cry for Tom Garvey’s relief, the stubborn father who is defiant for an unlikely future of promise for the area he occupies while also ignoring the welfare of his family against the forces of nature.  Joe is offering Tom and Mae hundreds of thousands of dollars for their land so that he can enhance the state.  Joe’s bounty will rescue the family from insurmountable debt and the unforgiving floods that repeatedly destroy their crops.  Still, I’m supposed to believe that Joe is the asshole.

Sissy Spacek was nominated for Best Actress for her performance.  She competed against Sally Field (who won) and Jessica Lange.  Both were ironically featured in their own “farm life films” in 1984.  Spacek remains one of Hollywood’s finest actors.  However, I did not think there was much for her to do here.  A drawn-out sequence has Mae caught under a tractor with a nasty wound while the blistering heat bears down with no one around to help.  It has its moment of suspense because this film could go in many different directions of tragedy, but a development like this is more circumstantial than performance based.  If Katherine Hepburn or Laurence Olivier were under that tractor, the scene would not play out much differently.  It’s just a standard farmer accident destined to be included in a standard farmer picture.

The possibility of a love triangle is also implied during the film.  As soon as I saw the opening credits (Sissy Spacek, Mel Gibson, Scott Glenn), I hoped against all hope that the story would not go there, and yet…

Having hardly even used a rake or a shovel, I know that farming is a grueling life and still so necessary for our world consumption to survive.  The River attempts to demonstrate this message. I empathize with people like Tom.  I really do.  However, I empathize with the sacrifice they may need to take, not with their with their foolhardy stubbornness or their intrusion upon others’ challenges for gain.  If a doctor told me that no matter what efforts he performs he will not be able to save my arm or my leg, I’m going to have to believe him and accept that the limb must be amputated.  If an overflowing river and an unbearably long rainstorm affects my home, my farm, my family and my livelihood at least twice a year, eventually I’m going to come to my senses and tell myself that the bad guy is probably right. 

Contrary to the well-known slogan, sometimes money is everything.

JFK – DIRECTOR’S CUT

By Marc S. Sanders

Oliver Stone’s JFK is told through perspective, not necessarily history.  It’s not a biography and I do not believe Stone would ever claim it to be so.  It’s a thinking person’s picture that gives viewers entitlement to question what occurred, how it occurred and why it occurred.  It might guide you not to trust what anyone says, sees or hears, but let’s face it.  Probably the day Kennedy was shot, November 22, 1963, could we ever completely trust anyone ever again? 

(Forgive my cynicism.  I must backtrack a little.  I still trust my wife and daughter.)

Oliver Stone works through the eyes of New Orleans Prosecutor Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner, in what may have been his most challenging role to date at the time).  Garrison sees a little too easily that there are circumstances out of place, or maybe too neatly in place to satisfy the ultimate resolution that a known American defector to the Soviet Union, like Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman), acted alone in the assassination of the President.  Stone wrote the script for JFK with Jim Marrs and used Garrison’s input from his own novel. Nearly every scene builds into another possibility of how that fateful day came to be.  Stone even questions if a famous photo of Oswald on the cover of Life Magazine is real.   Too many cover ups with a building list of body count witnesses and too many coincidences keep Garrison up at night.  So, he assembles a crack team of investigators and fellow attorneys to reopen the case and question the official Earl Warren Commission.

Firstly, JFK is magnificent entertainment with a hair raising and unusual original score from famed film composer John Williams.  His notes on percussion with dings and harpsichord strings cue in at just the right moments when Stone introduces another one of many scenes that point out what seems cagy and suspect. The music of JFK works as a narrator.  This narrative keeps you alert.  Maybe you should look in each corner of the screen at times for some subtle clues.

It was also wise of Stone to go with a well-known cast of actors.  The Oscar winning editing from Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia moves at a breakneck pace.  Yet, because I recognize fine performers like Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Bacon, Tommy Lee Jones, Brian Doyle-Murray (Bill’s brother), John Candy and Joe Pesci it is easy to piece together who is playing who and what significance they lend to the many theories Garrison and Stone question next.  

My admiration for the casting continues with the Garrison team that performs with Costner – Michael Rooker, Laurie Metcalf (especially impressive), Wayne Knight, and Jay O. Sanders.  There’s also a clandestine trench coat guy named X portrayed by Donald Sutherland.  Who even knows if this guy ever existed?  He’s more secretive than Deep Throat, but Mr. X has a hell of a lot of information to justify Jim Garrison’s suspicions.  That is an especially marvelous sequence between two men strolling through Washington D.C., eventually concluding a disturbing realization on a park bench.

Sissy Spacek brings out another dimension to the Jim Garrison character.  She’s his wife and the mother of five who suffers the loss of her husband’s attention which is entirely focused on this compounding investigation.  I like Costner’s take on the Garrison character.  Early on he politely asks one of his associates to stop cursing.  He does not like that kind of talk.  Later, it is Garrison who is dropping a number of eff bombs in front of his wife and young children.  This conundrum of a case, a very puzzling detective story, is unraveling the investigator. 

JFK was instrumental for further Congressional consideration following its release.  Files were reopened.  Additional research was executed, and soon many of those secret documents pertaining to the assassination will be revealed in 2029.  Back in 1991, of course that appeared to be a lifetime away.  It’s time we know everything, though.  Arguably, most of who were involved in this incident are dead by now.  Let us know our history.  Still, Garrison was bold enough to point skepticism at not just the adversarial relationship Kennedy may have had with Castro, the Cubans and their Communist allies, but also the people within the CIA and the FBI.  Lyndon Johnson is not even free from scrutiny after he’s sworn in.  Some on Garrison’s team went so far as to factor in culpability from the mafia.  Garrison was not so keen on that theory, actually. 

The construction of Oliver Stone’s film is unparalleled.  I think it’s his best film to date and I can find few others that even compare to how he assembled the picture.  It begins with the voiceover of Martin Sheen laying out many news cycles that were occurring ahead of Kennedy’s murder such as the Bay Of Pigs and the President’s supposed efforts to withdraw from Vietnam.  Sheen’s narrative comes at you very fast with Stone incorporating real life home movies of Kennedy along with his brother Bobby, as well as Castro, and television news footage from Vietnam and anywhere else events were happening.  By the end of the roughly five-minute opening, your head might be spinning. 

Thereafter, though, Stone goes through Garrison’s day on November 22, 1963, watching the outcome following the momentous event and the writer/director works his way into the drama beginning with Asner and Lemmon as two drunk old guys walking through the rain and getting into an argument. 

Three years pass by and so begins Jim Garrison’s motivations to follow multiple trails of breadcrumbs that lead to a lot of different places, all unlike what Earl Warren surmised. 

The scenes work quickly from that point on, and cuts of theoretical reenactments occur.  Who knows if any of these scenes are factual?  Stone and Garrison want you to at least consider their reasonable likelihood.  Moments happen where Joe Pesci and Tommy Lee Jones’ characters appear to be lying about even knowing one another while Stone will depict a sexual role play encounter between them which also includes Kevin Bacon as someone with no more reason to lie. 

Episodes are deeply focused on Lee Harvey Oswald depicted as an infamous and suspected patsy in association with others who may have a reason to want Kennedy dead.  Gary Oldman hides so well in the role.  Oliver Stone even lends focus to how different witnesses describe Oswald.  In some scenes it is Oldman, but then there are other times where a shorter, more overweight man may have been the real Oswald. Later, there’s an Oswald who is taller and more slender. 

A few years ago, I was visiting Dallas, and I was able to spend a some time walking around the crossroads where Kennedy was shot in the convertible while seated next to his wife Jackie.  Watching JFK again lent more clarity to all of the locales such as where Oswald was supposedly shooting from the top floor of the corner book depository.  Kevin Costner and Jay O. Sanders go through the motions of Oswald firing the three shots from his rifle in the short amount of time span.  The script also questions why Kennedy was taken out by Oswald after the turn off the corner of Elm and Houston. There appears to be a better wide-open clear shot long before the turn with the car only going ten miles per hour.  The men question if it was Oswald, then why didn’t he take advantage of the clearer shot.

I know.  I could go on and on.  I have to stop myself.  There’s a ton – A TON – of information in JFK.  It becomes addicting to watch.  You don’t even want to pause the long film for a bathroom break.  I watched the extended Director’s Cut by the way. 

Many common critiques of JFK lean towards how many of these scenes did not even happen.  People are happy to point out there’s no evidence to truly say any of Oliver Stone’s enactments occurred.  I agree, but that’s not the point of this director’s piece.  This is primarily told through the eyes of Jim Garrison.  Kevin Costner is great as the listener, the observer and especially at the conclusion, the describer.  Watch him physically respond to anyone he shares a scene with.  There’s a memorable twitch he offers while at the scene of the assassination that works perfectly with a jarring echo of a gunshot edited into the film.  He’s also great at turning his head down as the thinker while Mr. X lays out an enormous amount of information that comes from several different directions.  Because the film comes from Garrison’s perspective, it does not have to be true.  It only has to be what the investigating prosecutor reasonably believes, and what he absorbs from suspects, witnesses, and his devoted team. 

A final speech of Garrison’s is told at the trial of suspect Clay Bertram, aka Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), who was the only man tried by Garrison for Kennedy’s murder.  First, it’s important to note that during this fifteen-minute sequence, when Stone cuts back to Garrison in the courtroom, Costner is wearing different suits.  So, while it is assembled as an ongoing rundown, it is not meant to all be in one instance.  Garrison lays claim to an endless amount of possibilities and circumstances that at times have no correlation with each other but could possibly all merge together towards November 22, 1963.  Critics argued this speech of Garrison’s never took place.  That’s correct.  However, this is a movie and for the efficiency of information to come out, a funnel must be opened up to learn what is being pursued and what has been uncovered.  This is the strategy that the script for JFK adopts and it works, leaving you thinking and rightfully doubting what our governing bodies and history books have told us.  Most famous of all of these nonsensical happenings delivered by Garrison is the “Magic Bullet Theory” made extra famous by Jerry Seinfeld with Wayne Knight on the comedian’s sitcom.  It’s silly but it is also a response to the impact that came from JFK.

JFK has a very glossy appearance from the Oscar winning cinematography.  Reflections and natural glares come off of Jim Garrison’s glasses.  The exasperation, along with the shiny persperation of John Candy’s sleazy lawyer character is undeniably noticed as his integrity is being questioned.  Staged reenactments are shown in black and white, clear color or grainy distressed output (such as recreations of the known Zapruder Film).  Nothing is clear about what led to Kennedy’s murder.  So, Oliver Stone’s filmmaking team will ensure that nothing should look consistent.  There are no straight answers; only endless amounts of reasons to ask another question after another.

Oliver Stone does not make JFK as complex as some will have you believe.  It’s quite easy to piece together who represents what in this story.  Many theories are offered at lightning speed, but they hardly ever intersect with each other until a probability is completely laid out on the table and then the film moves on to the next one.

JFK may have a long running time and a large cast with a lot to say and ask, but it’s an exhilarating thrill to behold.  Who knows what is true?  The importance of Oliver Stone’s masterpiece demonstrates that much of what we were told as truth may not consist of the entirety of facts. 

Again, question your governing bodies and ask the hows and whys and whos.  Oliver Stone reminds us that we have that right as the citizens of America. 

What really happened to our President, and who was really responsible?

FOUR CHRISTMASES

By Marc S. Sanders

I love Christmas cookies.  Those Santa, snowman and tree shaped sugar cookies with the frosting and sprinkles.  They are my weakness come every December.  Cookie cutter, however, is not necessarily a compliment when talking about a movie.  Four Christmases is as cookie cutter as they come.

Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn are Kate and Brad, an unmarried couple happily going on three years and ready to celebrate the holidays alone in Fiji while lying to their divorced parents, on both sides, about doing charitable service within poorly developed countries.  However, when they arrive at the airport and learn that their flight is cancelled, wouldn’t you know it?!?!  A news reporter is there to capture them on live television revealing their ruse.  Now Brad and Kate have no choice but to visit each parent’s home on Christmas.  With less than an hour and a half running time, let’s chop this up evenly, shall we?  Figure there will be about 15-20 minutes devoted to each parent.  Hence the title… (say it with me now) …Four Christmases.

Let’s go see Brad’s dad first, Robert Duvall, who lives with Brad’s aspiring MMA fighting brothers played by Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw.  They live a simple life with a Zenith television set and Christmas presents that are purchased with a ten dollar or less limit. A gift of a satellite dish is not gonna go over well, and will likely mean a fall off the roof.  Side note: doesn’t falling off a roof seem to happen a lot in Christmas movies?  Also, if the bros are into MMA fighting, well you know that Brad is going to have to endure body slams galore while Kate simply gasps in shock at her boyfriend’s demise.

Transition time in this film happens in the car while going to the next Christmas celebration.  Brad and Kate take these opportunities to question the purpose of their relationship.  They think they have relationship troubles licked by NOT getting married and not devoting themselves to time with family, but are they kidding themselves? 

Next stop is at Mary Steenburgen’s house, Kate’s mom.  Kate’s older sister played by Kristin Chenoweth is here too.  Kate’s agonizing childhood is brought up for laughs like attending a fat camp and reminiscing about her being the one with the cooties and fearful of bounce houses.  Oh, look what’s in the backyard!  A bounce house!  How ironic!  Know where this is going?  A visit to the church of an overzealous evangelist (Dwight Yoakum), where Kate and Brad are quickly recruited to participate in the Nativity play, happens. 

This is about midway through the film and I gotta say I can’t blame Brad and Kate for always lying about going somewhere else for the holidays.  Who wants to live with this kind of torment?  There’s some truth to the adage “You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family.”  The movie wants me to recognize the oversight of Brad and Kate and their disregard for family time, but I don’t see it.  These are cruel people that they are confronted with.

Next up, let’s go see Sissy Spacek, Brad’s mom, who is sharing coitus with Brad’s high school best friend.  Enough said there. 

There’s more transitional driving to happen where the question of if Brad wants to get more serious about their relationship is discussed following Kate’s reveal that she took a pregnancy test.  Often in films, it’s the baby factor that tests the relationships.  I wish Hollywood would think outside that box a little.  Having children is not the end all be all, all the time, in building a loving relationship.  Components involving work, religion, and money also come into play.  Mustn’t forget about love too.  Just once, I’d like to see something else.  So many couples live happily without children.  We are even reminded how it’s rude and intrusive to ask “when are you going to have a baby?”  In fact, it is rude to ask that question because it’s too standard and presumptuous.  Hollywood should account for that.  I digress though.

The fourth and final Christmas visit occurs at Jon Voight’s house, Kate’s dad.  Not much wrong here, as we are in the final act of the movie where it’s more about a will they or won’t they conundrum for Brad and Kate.  So, cue the insightful commentary from Voight dressed in a comfy blue sweater.

Look, I can’t deny it.  I laughed at several moments in Four Christmases.  Favreau is hilarious in his tattooed, buzz cut, intimidating presence.  The Nativity play with Brad dressed as Joseph and getting caught up in the hallelujah enthusiasm is funny too.  Duvall is doing his old man redneck routine like he does in Days Of Thunder, and well…c’mon it’s ROBERT DUVALL!!!!

I just wish I didn’t know what was coming from one scene to the next.  In a film this structured, you don’t even have to try to predict what will happen.  You have an involuntary instinct to just know. 

As well, I don’t get a kick out of seeing how uncomfortable characters are made out to be when they are doing nothing but paying a visit.  Poor Brad gets outnumbered by his fighting brothers and suffers the Home Alone slapstick body blows.  Later, a baby spits up all over Kate’s dress, and Brad starts to dry heave at the sight of the mess. That’s not funny.  That’s a shame.  In life that happens.  Babies spit up, but we should feel awful for the victim.  How uncomfortable that must be.  Kate is not Joe Pesci trying to rob a house and getting a deserving paint can to the face.  Kate isn’t laughing at her misfortune.  She’s in shock.  Steenburgen and Chenoworth cackle hysterically, though.  I can’t bring myself to do that.    I feel bad for these two, and all I’m thinking is that it really sucks that they couldn’t make it to Fiji.  I wish they made it to Fiji.  What a shame they never got to Fiji.

Like Home Alone or Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Four Christmases wants to deliver the message that there is nothing better than to spend the holidays with the family, or get married and start a family of your own.  Yet the campaign seems to defeat itself in its demonstration.  I love my family and I love being married, but if I saw this film ahead of what I have now in life, twenty years going strong, I might have thought otherwise. 

Quick reminder: THEIR FAMILIES ARE FRACTURED IN DIVORCE ALREADY!!!!  So, all that Four Christmases tells me is TO HELL WITH FAMILY.  I JUST WANNA GO TO FIJI!!!!!