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(Spoiler warning: This film could not be adequately described without telling more of the plot than I usually like to tell. It is clear early on where this film is going. However, if you prefer not to read details of the plot, be warned.)
The summer is off to a roaring start with the return of a type of film we have not seen in a while, a big sprawling spectacular historical novel in cinematic form. This is a film in the grand tradition of epics like THE UNTAMED, which took Tyrone Power and Susan Howard from Ireland to a trek across South Africa with the Boers. It is rare enough these days to see an historical film set in another century. FAR AND AWAY sweeps the audience from the tenant unrest in Ireland in 1892 to the Irish slums of Boston to a brief sequence in the Ozarks and finally to the Oklahoma land rush. The land rush race of 1893 is eye-poppingly brought to the screen on a scale rarely seen on films any more. Along the way the viewer gets a pleasurable history lesson about conditions in Ireland, Boston, and Oklahoma of a century ago. FAR AND AWAY is *a lot* of film. It is 140 minutes of story.
The story opens in western Ireland. There tenant farmers live and die in abject poverty, owing everything they have to absentee landlords. Many of these landlords never even saw the properties that made them rich. Joseph Donelly (played surprisingly well by Tom Cruise) has dreams of escaping his poverty and owning his own lands. His dreams change when the rent collector indirectly kills Donelly's father and then intentionally burns Donelly's home. Donelly leaves home, intending to find and murder his landlord Daniel Christie (played by Robert Prosky). Christie turns out to be a likable fellow and Donelly a completely incompetent assassin. Soon Donelly is a patient being cared for by Christie's family in Christie's own house. Donelly particularly is interested in Shannon Christie (played by Nicole Kidman--Cruise's real-life wife). Shannon fancies herself a very modern woman and has dreams of running away to America, where they are giving away free land in Oklahoma and where she can be the equal of any man. It is no surprise to the audience that she is eventually off to America with part of the family treasure and with Donelly in tow as a sort of servant--at least that is what she thinks he is.
The longest chapter of the story is set in the Irish immigrant slums of Boston, where the couple go from riches to rags to riches and back to rags. The historical re-creation here is beautifully done. We see the immigrant population and the brothels. Donelly and Shannon are forced to pose as brother and sister and share a room in a brothel. Shannon plucks chickens and barely makes enough money to cover the rent, while Donelly is adopted by a local bully (played by Colm Meany of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION) and groomed as a bare-knuckle boxer. Donelly has a meteoric career as a boxer- -reminiscent of too many other of Cruise's films. Eventually the couple is dragged apart by poverty. Donelly tries a minor stint laying railroad track in the Ozarks before he decides to head west and find his land in Oklahoma. They once again meet up for the largest and most famous of the Oklahoma land rushes, the Cherokee Strip race. (Ever wonder what Cherokee Strip Day commemorated?) The Cherokee Strip was a six-million-acre strip of land between Kansas and Oklahoma bought from the Cherokee Nation for $8,500,000. It was partitioned into plots of land, and at noon on Saturday, September 16, 1893, the race for land began. The first person to get to one of the plots and replace the marker flag in it with his own flag owned it. One to a customer. This was the best known of the Oklahoma land rushes, attracting 100,000 settlers ("boomers"). A settler could be shot for being a "sooner," cheating and going to a plot of land sooner than noon. Sooners are, however, commemorated in the state nickname: The Sooner State. The Cherokee Strip land rush has been depicted in films several times before--most notably in the 1931 film CIMARRON, based on the novel by Edna Ferber and which won the Oscar for best picture. However, for once budget constraints seem to have been a small issue. Aerial shots of the rushing boomers indicate the land rush was recreated for FAR AND AWAY on a massive scale.
While the film has the feel of a novel, it was in fact based on an original screenplay. The screenplay was done by co-producer Bob Dolman. It was based on a story by Dolman and by director Ron Howard. This is purely a Hollywood product, story and screenplay, which makes it all the more surprising that the result is so pleasing. There are a few false moves, the worst coming in the final seconds of the film, but general the writing is quite good.
Tom Cruise does well with a script that involves many of his talents. Both his boxing and his horse-riding are surprisingly good and done in large part apparently without doubles. The Irish accent at first seems strange coming from Cruise, but only because his own inflection is familiar. Had I not seen him before, I would probably accept the Irish accent as his own. Kidman's talents also seem more than sufficient for her role. Robert Prosky never turns in a bad performance, of course.
Because there is so much to see in this film, it was shot on extra-wide 65mm film stock. That would not be uncommon for a special-effects-oriented film but is most unusual for a film with few or no visual effects. Just one more reason FAR AND AWAY is a good buy in a movie ticket.
Kudos to Ron Howard for the best and most entertaining film I have seen so far this year. I give it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale. It's nice to be enthusiastic about a Hollywood studio film once in a while.
By : Mark R. Leeper
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FAR AND AWAY has quite rightly been described, as it was in the Seattle P-I, as an historic romance novel, of the Danielle Steele variety, come to the screen. Gothic romances have been with us for decades, but this may be a new subgenre for the films. It is far less interested in history than it is in romance, and little things like historical verity, reality, even probability and the normal passage of time are likely to be swept aside by the rush of superhuman emotions, mostly restrained until the last scene.
This is not to say that FAR AND AWAY is not as enjoyable a piece of cornball as you're likely to encounter for some time. It has some of that old epic sweep, it has pace and movement that only bogs down once -- and that for a little romantic interlude -- and it has wonderful set pieces. And like all of Ron Howard's films it is safely sanitized and irrepressibly wholesome. Even the whores are as safe and clean and friendly as the Ladies' Sewing Circle.
I think it is profitable to see FAR AND AWAY as acts of contrition on the parts of Howard (for BACKDRAFT) and Cruise and Kidman (for DAYS OF THUNDER). This film is vastly superior to either of those, although the fire photography looks mighty familiar.
Howard and writer Bob Dolman have given us an old-fashioned narrative that is rousing, funny, and uplifting, and heartwarmingly romantic. Howard has used his 70-millimeter process (Super Panavision 70) to wonderful effect, especially in the really big, really sharp territorial shots, and most especially in the Land Rush sequence, which is rousing as all hell and full of details glimpsed for a second or five in the pell-mell onslaught of people, animals and landscape. I also enjoyed the bare-knuckle fight sequences; one cannot help but cheer Cruise on to victory each time he strips off his shirt. Of course, it is all shameless, predictable, and shallow. But what the hell! it's also great fun.
Cruise and his wife Nicole Kidman do creditable jobs with their roles. I am beginning to think, though, that Howard for all his facility is not a woman's director. It certainly seemed to me that a great opportunity was passed up in the creation of Shannon's character. She could have been a truly fascinating woman, instead she remains only, half-understood, half-realized. Cruise, on the other hand, appears to have taken his character about as far as the script would allow. Of course, it is possible that he is a better actor than she, but it's not a pretty thought and one which I am loathe to entertain.
The supporting actors are a mixed bag, generally good, but uneven. Robert Prosky who played Shannon's land-owner father was pretty close to perfect, a man whose desire for freedom was every bit as strong as it was submerged by his wife's powerful personality. I don't have many of the cast members' names in front of me. The part of the wife was excellent, however, and grew in an interesting way. The main heavy, the estate manager (was that Thomas Gibson?), is probably too dark, too heavy, too one-sided to be interesting, but the actor gave it his all and made us feel some serious animosity toward character. I have more of a problem with the Irish villagers in the first part of the movie, viz., they are so darn cute. This is Howard cleaning up history for us, I fear, just as he managed to de-odorize the Irish slums of New York, as well as pass up an opportunity or two to show how really rotten the system was that used and owned the immigrants to the benefit of the bosses.
I was most distressed, however, to see the incredibly short shrift Howard and Dolman gave to the Native Americans whose land was being stolen from them to make the Land Rush possible in the first place. We have a -- what? -- five second shot of three Indians, one wearing part of a U.S. cavalry uniform, watching the white settlers line up for the start of the Rush. I think they might spared a line or two of dialog to set the record straight. That the Cimarron Strip was the last of Indian Territory, that major treaties were being broken one more time, that the land was already occupied. And so forth, and so on. Familiar you say? Sure it is. And worth repeating every once in a while. Like the story of the Holocaust, the World War II Holocaust, that is.
But still, and despite the above, or maybe because of it, Ron Howard has given us a rip-snorting, rootin'-tootin' epic of the Irish in America, by extension of all immigrants, an epic that sweeps us along and entertains us mightily.
I can recommend FAR AND AWAY to most of you even at full prices.
By : Frank Maloney
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