A River Runs Through It

Rating:
Summary: VISUALLY LYRICAL, SOMEWHAT SLOW, BUT A BEAUTIFUL MOVIE.
Review: Most negative reviews here grumble about the movie's slowness, which is fair. Yet, despite its lack of event, this nostalgic recollection through one man's memories is a beautiful cinematograph of experience and family values.

At the very least, you'll remember its stunning landscapes for a long time, particularly the powerful and majestic "Blackfoot River" captured immaculately by the same cinematographer as Dangerous Liaisons. Montana must be a pretty state!

Robert Redford's voiceover narration in his silken voice is calm, allowing the poetry of Norman Maclean's written words to carry the emotion: "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it."

What piqued my attention was its subtheme of the passion for a pursuit -- fly fishing in this case, which is an intrigue to me in itself. As the fishing lines flick and whisk over the whispering river, a low sun sheening the tree-lined horizon, the rhythm of image embraces imagination and meditation. We are close to understanding what Norman means when he says he is "haunted by waters".

By the time the film comes to its lyrically elegiac end, it has touched your heart and made you think. That is perhaps a good reason in and of itself to watch the movie. Personally, I'd even recommend getting the DVD, it's one you'll watch with kids or people who matter to you.

Rating:
Summary: A Return To God's Land
Review: Robert Redford's _A River Runs Through It_ is a movie based on the autobiographical novel by Norman MacLean. The setting for this movie is the picteresque river country of Missoula, Montana. The story is told through the eyes of Norman MacLean, who reflects on his life of love, schooling, hardship, and fishing. Norm begins the story relaying the details of his father (Tom Skeritt), the minister and his quick-tempered younger brother Paul, played by Brad Pitt. As the picture progresses Norm tells of how is life revolved around to things: God and fly fishing. As Norm and Paul get older they split their ways. Norm aims for a life of academics and teaching in the Northeast, and Paul becomes a newspaperman in Montana with a nasty habit for gambling, fighting, and drinking. When Norm returns home after many years, he finds that things are no longer as he left them. It takes a reuniting with his father and brother and a new-found love to find out who he is and what he has lost.

Rating:
Summary: Cinematic Poetry.
Review: I don't think anybody who has ever visited the American West, particularly the north-western states of Montana and Wyoming, hasn't come away deeply impressed with the majestic beauty of their mountains, rivers, streams, endless skies, prairies and meadows. Many probably went home to find that the photos they took, trying to immortalize their impressions, just didn't seem to do justice to the real thing, and wishing they possessed the craft to adequately capture the region's beauty in images, whether literary or visual. Robert Redford has succeeded to combine words and pictures in this stunning adaptation of Norman Maclean's 1976 autobiographical novella "A River Runs Through It."

Set in early 20th century rural Montana, this is the coming-of-age story of the author and his brother Paul, sons of a Scottish Presbyterian minister who raised them with both love and sternness and instilled in them, more than anything else, an understanding for the divine beauty of their land, symbolized by and culminating in a fly fisherman's skill in casting his rod, and his ability to become one with the river in which he fishes. For, in Norman Maclean's words, in their family "there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing;" and growing up, the brothers came to believe quite naturally that Jesus's disciples themselves must have been fly fishermen, too; and that consequently every good fly fisherman is closer to the divine than any other human.

But while they were united by their love for their native land and its rivers and fish, the brothers couldn't have been any more different on a personal level. And thus, this is also a story of brotherly (and parental) love and loss, of the inability to communicate, and of dreams and aspirations nurtured and fatally disappointed. While disciplined, sensible Norman (Craig Sheffer) left Montana for a six-year college education at Dartmouth and ultimately - after having temporarily returned home and taken a bride - to assume a teaching position at the University of Chicago, rebellious Paul (Brad Pitt in a truly career-defining role) knew that he would never leave his home state and "the fish he had not yet caught;" and opted for a journalist's life instead. But ultimately he wasn't able to fight the demons that possessed him; and his parents and brother had to stand by and helplessly watch him embark on a path of self-destruction, reduced to comments on symbolic matters like Paul's decision to change the spelling of their last name by capitalizing the "L" ("Now everybody will think we are Lowland Scots," scorned their father), where to open topicalize their concerns would have destroyed the careful equilibrium of mutual respect, love, hope, caution and guardedness characterizing their relationship. And so, only after Paul's death could his father tell a hesitant Norman that he knew more about his brother than the fact that Paul had been a fine fisherman: "He was beautiful" - and mourn in a sermon, even later, that all too frequently, when looking at a loved one in need, "either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them. We can love completely, without complete understanding."

Craig Sheffer and Brad Pitt are perfectly cast as the earnest, reasonable Norman and his maverick brother Paul, who relies on his innate toughness in his fateful attempt to take life to its limits and still beat the devil, but who also turns the casting of a fishing line into an art form that makes a rainbow rise from the water, and who with his greatest-ever catch stands before his father and brother "suspended above the earth, free from all its laws, like a work of art." Moreover, this movie reunited Robert Redford with Tom Skerritt, with whom he had first shared the screen in the 1962 Korean war drama "War Hunt" (both actors' big-screen debut), and who gives a finely-tuned, sensitive performance as the Reverend Maclean. Notable are also the appearances of Brenda Blethyn as Mrs. Maclean and Emily Lloyd as Norman's bride-to-be Jessie. But the movie's true star is Montana itself, particularly its rivers and streams; every frame of Philippe Rousselot's Academy Award-winning cinematography and every sweep of the camera over Montana's magnificent landscape, and along the silver bands of its rivers with their gurgling cataracts and waves curling softly against their banks, powerful testimony to Robert Redford's genuine love and respect for the West and for nature in general; the causes closest to his heart and matched in importance only by his efforts to promote a movie scene outside of Hollywood. And Redford himself assumes the (uncredited) role of the narrator, thus bringing to the screen Norman Maclean's lyrical language and uniting words and pictures in an audiovisual sonnet, subtly accentuated by Mark Isham's gentle score.

Both movie and novella end with the lines that have given the story its title: "[I]n the half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul; and memories, and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River, and a four-count rhythm, and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs" - those of Norman Maclean's now-lost loved ones; those he "loved and did not understand in [his] youth." As we have had to learn, it is not only human life that is terminal; even nature itself (including, incidentally, the Macleans' beloved Big Blackfoot River) is not immune to destruction by human carelessness. This movie is a powerful plea to all of us not to wait until it has become too late.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful cinema
Review: This movie has some amazing cinematography. I've only been to Montana as a kid for very little time, but I wish I could visit again. The movie is about two different brothers brought up in Montana their father plays an important role in the movie also. There are scenes of fly fishing in this movie that are worth the price of admission. Also this film is well narrated by Robert Redford, it never distracted me and that's hard to do with a star that has such a familar voice, but it fits in so well. A gem, that may not be for all action film fans but a drama that will please many.

Rating:
Summary: Phenominal!
Review: At once beautiful, touching, and deeply moving, A River Runs Though It is the story of two boys who charistically different, retain a close bond through their love of fishing in their homtown of Missoula, Montana. Brad Pitt(legends of the fall) does an exceptional job as Paul Maclean, a carefree, daredevil type who has a gambling problem. this performance shows that Brad is not just a pretty boy but also an superb actor. Craig Sheffer gives a spellbinding performance as Norman Maclean, Paul's serious, level headed brother. He seems to radiate an auroa of light that is rare in a acting performance. I love this movie because it shows Montana's natural beauty and the love of two brothers that can never be broken. It also potrays the message; "it's a nice day out, let's go fishing" One more thing to fully appriciate this movie you have to see it!

Rating:
Summary: Sublime, Picturesque, an Ode to the American Land
Review: I have seen all the films directed by Robert Redford and appreciated his love of the American people and the land. In A River Runs Through It, Redford displays the lyric romanticism and visual splendor of the high Rocky Mountins of Montana as if he were a 19th century landscape painter of the ilk of Thomas Moran or Albert Bierstadt. This film makes love to the visual and the word, with text by author Norman Maclean, and stunning camera work by Phillippe Rousselot (Serpent's Kiss, Reigne Margot).

Redford's cast is perfect. Tom Skerritt is the Rev. MacLean, a man whose methods of education include fly fishing as well as the Bible, Brenda Blythen, the mother, and his sons, Craig Schaffer and Brad Pitt create a family whose interactions reflect the same problems all encounter with growing teenage sons, and later, complex young men. Both Schaffer and Pitt are totally believable as the brothers whose love of fly fishing and each other will tie them together forever. It is the relationships between men, father and sons, brothers, and their women to the outside world that grounds A River Runs Through It to a vein of storytelling that is missing in so many of Hollywood films produced in recent years.

What makes these relationships special however, is the attention Redford gives to the language as spoken in dialogue. This is a literate script, beautiful to hear and unforgettable when coupled with the stunning Montana rivers and mountains. The words and setting are equal to performances by a cast that rises to their material. While the idea of fly fishing may seem an odd device to center a story, it is not so implausible in Redford's directorial hands. Given the material, Redford's ode to a simpler time and life is worth revisiting again and again. This treasure of a film should be included in every collection.

Rating:
Summary: Another Directorial Accomplishment
Review: Robert Redford won an Oscar for his direction of, "Ordinary People", in 1980. He has since directed films like, "Quiz Show", and this film, "A River Runs Through It", with consummate skill. He also founded The Sundance Film Festival which now routinely introduces new talent in all aspects of the making of movies on an annual basis.

His only direct presence is the narration he does at various times during this movie. It also does not take a great deal of imagination to see in the actor Brad Pitt, of 11 years ago, a man that bears a remarkable resemblance to Redford himself. This story of the zeal with which aficionados dedicate themselves to the art of fly fishing is a beautiful film to watch. Redford puts Montana on the screen in such a way as to make virtually anyone desirous of having a home amongst the mountains.

The story is much more than a feast for the eyes as the story of a minister's two sons, who are strictly raised, ultimately have such divergent lives, both in type and length. This is not a very happy story, although it has moments of pure joy that balance tragedy as well as tragedy can hope to be balanced. One of the best examples is when Brad Pitt as Paul does battle with a prize catch in one of their favorite rivers. To say he almost fights the fish in its world as opposed to his own is not much of a stretch, and it is wonderfully filmed.

Robert Redford has made his place amongst the legends of the film industry, and he has done this by not only appearing in front of the camera, but behind it as well.

Rating:
Summary: Dull Hollywood Tripe
Review: Here is Hollywood glamorati trying to make us believe in small town virtue so that we will applaude them for their touching heart rending acting. Its tripe and nothing more. There is nothing here that has anything to do with small towns; it is pure Hollywood.

Not even the slightest attempt to portray a real small town. I mean ... an underground speak-easy club and a gambling club all in the same small rural Montana town. Pleeeze give me a break. This isn't Chicago! There aren't enough people there to support that kind of sin infrastructure.

The whole movie is so unrealistic, so contrived, so full of paltitudes - it is just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Of course in our times it is lauded as a great tribute to rural America, but it is nothing of the sort. Brad baby never has a hair out of place. He is gorgeous in every shot, as is his brother and everyone in town. No dirt under their finger nails. The people who live in that type of town lack hair stylists and manicurists. They don't look like movie stars and don't act like brats from suburbia. The people in those towns are generally not good looking, they are slow, not to energetic and, well, strange. You'll see nothing resembling that in this glamorati vehicle.

The whole moral is that even if you disgrace your family, even if you are a drunk, a blaggart, a loser, a gambler - you really are perfection if you can fly fish. Virtue reduced to fly fishing - so 90s, so now, so trendy of Hollywood's new love of high priced cabins in Montana and long retreats in the mountains. I may not be so virtuous, but I'm a helluva fly fisherman so that's what counts (substitute "actor" for "fisherman" and you have the formula for Hollywood virtue, i.e. I may be a miserable useless human being but they love me on the big screen).

As I said tripe. No one will watch this pabula ten years from now. It will be trite and forced like some 50s movie about the perfect man as seen through the myopia of the times.

Rating:
Summary: 'Ansel Adams meets Elia Kazan' in this awesome film!
Review: Once upon a time, Hollywood made "films, " and some of these films became the epitdome of art. That talent has all but been forgotten in an era where imagination takes a back seat to the obvious. There used to be a clamor for fine directors and actors who could convey the thoughts and feelings of an author or screenwriter without the use of nudity or foul language. They used to make films without explosions and blood and gore. And those films used to be AND still are better than most anything that Hollywood cranks out today.

Enter "A River Runs Through It" directed by Robert Redford. This film is a quiet character study that has brilliance in the acting and directing. This is so apparent that you'll find your emotions welling up in you as you watch it. It is such a delicately made film that you'll need to watch it multiple times to understand that the director and actors aren't going to spell out what you should be feeling. They aren't going to speak every emotion they're having - you're going to have to surmise those for yourself. This is so NOT like the films Hollywood makes today. It's a subtle, beautiful film.

Brad Pitt may have made a mark in the public's collective memory when he appeared shirtless in "Thelma and Louise", but in "A River Runs Through It" he shows his chops and in doing so, let's us know he is an exceedingly talented actor not just a pretty boy.

Craig Sheffer (has the lead in this film and does a phenomenal job of giving us a young man living with the painful knowledge that he must forever live in the shadow of his younger brother, Paul (Pitt). Though, Norman (Sheffer) is the reliable touchstone, Paul has a remarkable brightness of light that encompasses him.

Paul is the opposite of Norman emotionally, but they share a common familial bond and a love of fly fishing in the Missoula River. They are able to work out their differences while they fish. Theirs is a relationship that doesn't depend on words, but rather on understanding.

A River Runs Through It is not unlike the story of the prodigal child, nor is it too far removed to be able to be compared to Elia Kazan's "East of Eden". It, too, was an intelligent film that didn't spell everything out for the viewer.

The story revolves around Norman and Paul as they grow up in Montana with their minister father and loving mother in the 1920's. Montana, itself, is a character in this film, as Redford shows us its majesty and grandeur without making it feel like a travelogue.

At once, funny and poignant and heart rending, A River Runs Through It tells us the quiet story of the two brothers growing into manhood and getting on with their lives. It doesn't have car crashes and there's no gratuitous nudity. The script doesn't rely on the screenwriter having a hampered vocabulary, thus forcing him to use expletives instead of true dialogue.

No, A River Runs Through It depends on talent. Talent from the book it was based on - talent from the screenwriter - talent from the director - and finally, talent from the fine cast of actors.

After watching this film, I doubt you'll be able to understand why it didn't take every award that Hollywood doles out.

It doesn't get much better than this.

Rating:
Summary: An Epic Runs through it
Review: This is a good story. An epic tale. Pitt is terrific as a ne'er do well son and brother who breaks your heart like he breaks his family's heart as they watch him slip farther and farther from their grasp. Unable to save him, they can do little but watch him destroy himself. Skerrit is divine in this role too. Excellent movie.