Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Thousand Acres" is derived from Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, itself a loose adaptation of King Lear that carries Shakespeare's plot into present-day Iowa. The film veers wildly between a pedestrian fidelity to Smiley's words and a surprising negligence of her plot sequence. The film works, but not nearly as well as it should...
...long been unappreciated for its sheer muscularity. As in her best work (probably "The Fabulous Baker Boys" and "Batman Returns") she executes an intensely physical performance, and her eye movements alone have more verve than Robards' entire performance. Rose sees herself as the most aggrieved party in the plot, but she is also one of its surest agents, a sort of director figure-note how many shots of other characters include Pfeiffer's arm or shoulder in the side of the frame, as if she is literally steering the action...
...Thousand Acres" -as-film eventually achieves a fascinating symmetry with the events of its own plot. Like an epic sweep of land or a childhood resentment, a Pulitzer-winning novel is a difficult inheritance, and without proper stewardship can degenerate quickly. The cornerstone virtues of the film-Shakespeare's brutal story and Smiley's ingenious new context-are enough to sustain a solid two-hour drama, but Pfeiffer excepted, the filmmakers reap little from the rich soil they have been handed...
...engrossing enough to watch this twoheaded beast of a police force at work, which is what Hanson lets us do for a bit, before the appropriately twisty plot really gets under way. The story itself is impeccably paced, a well-orchestrated series of cover-ups and discoveries, as Exley skillfully and stubbornly cuts his way through the many layers of the blue shield and those who profit by it (like a man who runs a service of call girls cut to resemble movie starlets). Surprises and not so teensy-weensy ethical decisions are sprinkled throughout as we wonder whether Exley...
...streets of Calcutta to take dying people in her arms or when she touched the open wounds of the poor, the despondent, the discarded and alone. When the Nobel Committee blasted her with fame, she had already written most of the tale of her life, which was without much plot, was propelled by a main character who never changed direction, yet had a great theme. The end of Mother Teresa's story is not the end of her order's work, which is one reason (her age is another) that her death makes one sad without shock...