A River Runs Through It

Rating:
Summary: The simple life
Review: This film about two brothers growing up at the turn of the century is full of great river and countryside scenes. Life is shown as it was before radio and T.V. The quiet in the house and how people worked and lived in those days was interesting. The movie touches on love and how families drift apart no matter how hard people try to keep them together. Tom Skerrit does a great job as their father who also is a minister who loves to fish. Going to college back then meant taking a train to a far away state and having to write letters back to your family for communication; very different from our lives. Families and communities did things together back them more than now,as choices for entertainment were limited. The film also shows the brother's and father's love for the river and for fishing. It also has some very sad parts which leave the viewer thinking about their own life and what's really important to them. Slow paced and well acted, it's worth seeing just for the outdoor views and the emotions spent.

Rating:
Summary: Enchanting
Review: Any director can fill a screen with pretty things and call it beautiful, just as any writer can fill a page with words and call it poetry. Those who have not yet been deluded into believing in total relativism know, however, how difficult true beauty and true poetry are to create. Greatness in film, like greatness in poetry, requires hard work, and that work comes to little unless it is inflamed with a divine light.

A River Runs Through it is a work of great beauty and true poetry. It is a film that I believe is destined to become a significant part of our national heritage, and in the long run I also believe that it is the most significant work for which Robert Redford will be remembered (not to take anything away from his other excellent work.) During his time here on earth, it would appear that he has been fortunate enough to attain something resembling wisdom, and all of it is communicated in the exquisitely simple, yet divinely inspired, way in which this film gives us these characters and this story.

Having also read Norman MacLean's books, I will mention that this film is an "adaptation" of his story of the same title. It is, however, that rarest of adaptations in that it gives up nothing to the original, and does it full and complete justice in every way that matters.

With each viewing of this film over the years, its profound use of symbolism and metaphor becomes ever more apparent to me. It is truly a family story in that it revolves around the universal themes of sibling rivalry, parental tribulation, the tenuous beginnings (and deep foundations) of love and the seemingly random but somehow inevitable movements of the hand of fate. You don't need to be a fisherman or have any interest in fly fishing to be deeply moved by this film; you simply need to be a human being.

In closing, I would like to beg Mr. Redford for a digitally remastered and restored director's cut in widescreen on DVD with an interview with him as a special feature. This film deserves the royal treatment, and it's about time it got it, don't you think?


Rating:
Summary: TOTAL CRAP
Review: I cant believe that Ive only found one bad review of this film on the whole internet. Have you all gone mad? Apart from the beauty of Brad Pitt and the Montana scenery, this is one of the most disappointing badly made and boring films I have seen since "Independance Day"! Deeply irritating, very bad continuity, (eg scenes where his clothes are all wet and the next minute totally dry) AWFUL mawkish script - particularly the narration - and Im sorry to all of those out there who like this self-indulgent and grossly over-rated film, but Im pretty pissed off Ive just wasted 2 hours of my day. I would have given it no stars if the form field had let me.


Rating:
Summary: The ONLY Movie I Have Ever Cried To !
Review: Way back in English Lit, University of Oregon, 25 years ago, I remember one idea that that once something achieves perfection in anything, it self distructs, always. A near perfect chair exists, a near perfect painting, a near perfect poem, a near pefect fly fisherman. But none of these exist in a perfect form. There is only one perfection and to attempt to mimimic it assures distruction.

This movie portrays that notion, just fine.