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Digging To China

Digging To China

List Price: $9.98
Your Price: $9.98
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Digging To China
Review: I thought that this movie was very interesting and heart warming. It makes you stop and think of our reality and that it is different from what you visualize. I really enjoyed viewing this movie and I highley recomend that if you haven't seen Digging to China, that you see it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Digging To China
Review: I thought that this movie was very interesting and heart warming. It makes you stop and think of our reality and that it is different from what you visualize. I really enjoyed viewing this movie and I highley recomend that if you haven't seen Digging to China, that you see it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: not your conventional tearjerker
Review: I was happily surprised at what a quirky, insightful and often humourous story this was (along with a teary ending). Evan Rachel Wood is superb superb in naturally bringing to life her unusually sensitive and perceptive character -- at the pace she's on she's destined for several academy awards. Bacon fortunately doesn't overdo it -- more like dicaprio in gilbert grape than the irritating hoffman in rainman. The script is packed with little dialogue gems that you'd never find in a Disney movie, and though Hutton's first-time directing shows its inexperience, it actually fits in with the simple atmosphere of the movie. Don't expect too much and be pleasantly surprised like me.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Sad but also happy
Review: It is about this girl whose mother dies and finds out that her sister is not really her sister but her mother. And the little girl dose not want to belive it. The girl also has a retarted friend (Kevin Backon) and her mother her reall one dose not want her to hang out with him anymore because he is retarted but the little girl dose not lisen and she always tries to run away.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: i dig it!
Review: Kevin Bacon portrayed a very realistic view of a mentally-challenged adult. I now have a greater respect for him as an actor, due to his portrayal in this film.

I laughed. I cried. So will you.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A fine film! Great performance by Kevin Bacon!
Review: This is a good film full of heart and soul! Great performances and a fine story! Filmed in the lucious Blue Ridge Mountains of Cherokee, North Carolina! Worth the price! Grade: A+

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: most touching movie I have never seen
Review: this is the movie you have to see in your life time

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My Favorite Movie
Review: This is truly my favorite movie. After watching this movie I became an immediete Kevin Bacon fan. I'm just a little girl but I think he is the best actor is the world. Excellent movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Masterson shines
Review: This was truly an underrated and overlooked film...the cast gives it its all....but Masterson does the best as a sister whose morals have gone awrty

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Growth of a Family
Review: Timothy Hutton's uplifting plot for his 1997 movie "Digging to China" -- which is the coming of age between a parent and child (Mary Stewart Masterson's "Gwen" and Evan Rachel Wood's "Harriet," respectively) -- projects a very significant and timely social message. The theme's impact on the audience, which is our realization that a parent-child relationship can be fostered even in the worst of circumstances, rivets the audience to their seats as they listen to the movie's last song, Patty Griffin's "One Big Love." From the start of this movie, we witness Gwen and Harriet trying to sort out, not only their own relationship, but every relationship that they have -- and they succeed, despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

In the beginning of the story, which takes place in 1969 rural Pennsylvania, twenty-five-year-old Gwen, who is ten-year-old Harriet's mother, pathetically tries to find friendship from the line of suitors she meets at the low-rent, run-down resort that she owns, and rarely leaves. Gwen maintains a rather peculiar lie to everyone (including Harriet, who believes it's true). Gwen claims that ten-year-old Harriet is her sister who is being raised by their mother, an aging alcoholic played by Cathy Moriarty ("mom"). "Mom's" only consistency is displaying questionable judgement. "Mom" plays along with Gwen's lie, and takes on the task of being Harriet's mother. When she goes out she's always drunk, which does not stop her from driving her canary-yellow 1965 Mustang (often on the wrong side of the road), at times, with ten-year-old Harriet in the car. At home, besides washing the dishes and helping Gwen maintain their resort, Harriet is tasked with mixing "mom's" martinis. "Mom's" indiscretions ultimately claim her life in a drunken automobile accident (in the middle of the story's development) forcing Gwen and Harriet's face-off, and subsequent parent-child development.

Harriet finds it difficult to make friends with the children she meets at school. Her innocence lost somewhere between "mom's" judgement and witnessing Gwen's precarious behavior around the resort. She is not taught "normal" social skills, and as a result not fit in with other children at school. But, despite this, she seems caring, and looks for friends -- though, like everything else in her life, this becomes confused as well. She looks in unconventional places, and finds an unlikely friend. Like Gwen, Harriet befriends a guest who's staying at their resort. The friend she finds is a retarded (soon to be institutionalized) thirty-year-old man -- "Ricky," who is convincingly portrayed by Kevin Bacon. It's soon after "mom's" deadly accident, and Harriet's friendship to Ricky surfaces that we begin to witness a new Gwen -- she's transformed into someone who begins to show some concern about what Harriet does, or doesn't do. She starts becoming a parent. After "mom's" funeral, Gwen breaks the news to a shocked (and, at first disbelieving) Harriet: "I'm your mother." Gwen begins the often unpleasant (and unpopular) task of being a parent. She points out, to a rebellious Harriet, that Ricky can't be, or shouldn't be, a ten-year-olds' best friend. After several of Harriet's rebellious outbursts, a pattern emerges as Gwen maintains: "you can't keep running away Harriet. This is your life. So, you had better get used to it, and you'd better get used to me."

As parent and child continue to realize their true roles, Harriet, becomes increasingly rebellious, runs away with Ricky (planning to use the draft dodger's famous "Underground Railroad"), and she and Ricky have an innocent wedding ceremony in a lake (very 60's). Harriet's attitude begins to change when she runs back home to Gwen -- for help saving an ailing Ricky who exclaims that he needs his mom. Gwen, naturally, is very concerned and protective, as she tries to divide the relationship between Harriet and Ricky. Harriet begins receiving, and absorbing messages that she's getting from other guests who say the "Gwen missed you very much." Several days later, after Ricky leaves, it appears as if Gwen and Harriet are ready to move forward as well.

In the closing scene, Harriet is in bed, and the place normally occupied by "mom" is empty. Gwen is out on the porch, sitting on a lawn chair, alone, without the company of one of her boyfriends. Needing her empty space in bed occupied by a parent, Harriet calls out to Gwen, with a suggestion--that almost sounds like an instruction manual for parents: "Gwen, your supposed to tell me a story until the Sandman comes." Obviously thrilled, or possibly relieved, Gwen says: "Do I pick us the subject, or do you?" Harriet replies "Either," as Gwen pauses, and gets up to tell her daughter a bedtime story.

This movie's theme, and the realistic way that it's presented by the story line and its outstanding performances, has many applications that, with a little thought, could relate in some way to most people who see this movie. Single parents, parents, rebellious kids, people with mental or physical limitations, and all those who know and care about someone that fall into one of those categories can learn from the growth experienced by "Digging to China's" Gwen and Harriet.


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