The tormented women in the epic tearjerker “A Thousand Acres”
(**** OUT OF ****) hope that change will brighten their lives.
Instead, change ushers in nothing but tragedy. The current popular designation for movies
such as this glossy Michelle Pfeiffer & Jessica Lange melodrama is chick
flicks. Covering all the dirt in the
life of a well-to-do Iowa farming clan, “A Thousand Acres” unravels as a soap
opera about anguish, incest, insanity, adultery, and cancer, clearly qualifying
this Touchstone Pictures release as a three-handkerchief extravaganza. Moviegoers not familiar with Jane Smiley’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel may prove less demanding than their more exacting
literary counterparts. Unsavory as most
of “Acres” is, “Proof” director Jocelyn Moorhouse and “Portrait of a Lady” scenarist
Laura Jones have exercised considerable artistic restraint and good taste in
their depiction of the events.
Set in Iowa in 1979, “A Thousand Acres” introduces us to
Larry Cook (Jason Robards), the Cook clan patriarch. He owns a thousand acres of free and clear
land. Larry loves to tell the story
about how his ancestors put in a drainage system and converted swamp land into profitable
farm acreage. Larry stands tall in the
eyes of the community and has a say in all major decisions. The Larry Cook character resembles
Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” which essentially was the idea behind Smiley’s
novel. Larry’s wife died from cancer,
but he has three daughters: Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer), Ginny (Jessica Lange),
and the youngest Carolina (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Rose and Ginny both are
married, Rose to Pete Lewis (Kevin Anderson) and Ginny to Ty (Keith Carradine).
The older sisters have stayed at home, living in houses on either side of their
father’s house. Rose is raising two
girls, but cancer has forced her to have a mastectomy. The only nudity in this movie is the scene in
the examination room when we are shown Pfeiffer face grafted onto someone else’s
body.
Carolina differs from her elder sisters. While they dress casually and are homemakers,
Carolina is an attorney who wear her hair pulled back severely into a bun. She isn’t married at the start of the movie,
and her respect for Larry cannot match that of her sisters. So when Larry, in an act of overwhelming
generosity, decides to form a corporation and give equal shares to everybody,
Carolina balks at the offer. Furious,
Larry all but disowns her, and nothing that the sisters can do will change
Carolina’s mind. Larry makes his
relatives a gift of the farm because he feels that the inheritance tax would
eat them alive. Initially, “A Thousand
Acres” gets off to a happy start. Before
fade-out, however, Moorhouse and Jones sling every bit of dirt that they can
muster.
We learn that Larry has feel of clay and that Rose and Ginny
differ in their temperament. While Rose
is consumed by her own sense of rage, Ginny insulates herself from the shadowy
past. The movie’s time frame encompasses
a pivotal but devastating turning point in the Cook clan. The two elder Cook sisters square off against
Carolina. Carolina accuses them of
duping Larry out of his farm. The people
in town are convinced that both Rose and Ginny cheated their father, too. Since Larry signed over the farm, he has
either confined himself to his mansion like a shut-in or he drives around
recklessly and gets drunk. Whatever
generosity that he had expressed at the beginning, Larry converts now into
hate, fear, and rage toward his two daughters.
In an after-dark tornado sequence, Larry raves insanely and calls his
daughters harlots. Eventually, the ugly
truth leaks out, and the Cook clan collapses like a house of cards.
As Ginny, Lange wears a glazed-eyed look and weaves a
pattern of anxiety with her expressive hands.
Ginny has spent her entire life repressing the truth, and her nervous
gestures and posture capture this evasion.
Lange’s performance is very mannered, and the matronly wardrobe that her
frumpy character wears dilutes Lange’s sensuous Hollywood persona. She has landed the choice role in “Acres.” Ginny is the only character that expands and
changes. Lange is such a seasoned
performer that she makes all of this fidgeting seem completely natural. As Rose, Pfeiffer gets to fulminate and fire
off at those people that she hates.
Pfeiffer has clearly gotten the flashy role, and she wrings every morsel
of thespian disgust out of it. Rose’s
revulsion for her father is almost as destructive as the cancer she fears will engulf
her, and she is not more charitable to her scummy, insensitive husband. Pfeiffer’s character could easily qualify as
the film’s villain, though that role belong to Jason Robards’ guilty patriarch.
Ideally cast as the father, Robards plays a parent whose
paternal instincts have grown pretty base.
Indeed, the script makes little mention of Larry’s crisis, but Robards
lets it erupt in a hypnotic performance that is all the more evocative
considering his brief appearance on the screen.
His scene on the witness stand in court reveals how a talented actor can
present character without having to spell it out. This style of grim acting comes easily to
Robards who legendary reputation in the American theatre derives from his
tortured Eugene O’Neil characters.
Robards actually resembles one of “Jurassic Park’s” predatory T-Rex
dinosaurs with his sunken eyes, sullen expressions, and occupational sneer. The performances alone are worth the price of
admission. Nobody is miscast. Keith Carradine’s famer husband is probably
the only straightforward character who emerges from these disasters with his
honesty intact. Pfeiffer and Lange endow
their performances with a sisterly blend.
Nevertheless, as sisters, they remain inevitably different. By the time the movie concludes, these
sisters have confessed what they could never have yielded in less strenuous
circumstances.
Director Jocelyn Moorhouse, whose credits include “How to
Make an American Quilt,” has crafted an elegiac saga of a family in disintegration. Definitely not a feel-good movie, “A Thousand
Acres’ is rather an emotional lobotomy that will leave you feeling sad but
relieved. Although Moorhouse and Jones
have pared down Smiley’s book, they deliver a vibrant film that bristles with
deep-seated domestic hostility.
