This is the only film I've ever seen for the first time, and then rewound and watched straight through again without even getting up for a cup of coffee. I don't even know where to begin in listing its qualities. Few films succeed in addressing such complex issues as race; our relationships with our parents; the nature of our attitudes to history; and the way the past shapes our lives in so subtle a manner as this. Somehow, John Sayles has managed to touch on all of these questions, without at any point being didactic, and to deal with them realistically and with respect to their complexity.
Most amazingly of all, Sayles shows all sides of the various arguments running through the film and yet still manages to produce solutions, or at least the hope of solutions. That he is able to achieve this is a consequence of the humanity of his outlook. With the exception of Charlie Wade - the one straightforward character in the script - everybody in this film is complicated, realistic and, above all, sympathetic. The smallest cameo parts - the old lady playing a gameboy; the "as liberal as the next guy" bartender - are more interesting and plausible than the central characters in the majority of films.
All this in a film which is not ostensibly character- or issue-driven. A film which instead features an involving mystery and an affecting romance, as well as numerous subplots (all beautifully paced and integrated), and in which almost everything proves to be connected.
Great works of art shouldn't have to throw their message into the audience's faces. Instead, as the audience looks at their more superficial aspects of beauty or excitement, they should be drawn into their subtleties and more interesting depths. In Lone Star, everything - the arguments about race and the past, the tangible sense of a real community, the subversiveness of the film's ending - flows from what is at base simply a good story. This film is one of the outstanding achievements of 90s American cinema 10/10.
Most amazingly of all, Sayles shows all sides of the various arguments running through the film and yet still manages to produce solutions, or at least the hope of solutions. That he is able to achieve this is a consequence of the humanity of his outlook. With the exception of Charlie Wade - the one straightforward character in the script - everybody in this film is complicated, realistic and, above all, sympathetic. The smallest cameo parts - the old lady playing a gameboy; the "as liberal as the next guy" bartender - are more interesting and plausible than the central characters in the majority of films.
All this in a film which is not ostensibly character- or issue-driven. A film which instead features an involving mystery and an affecting romance, as well as numerous subplots (all beautifully paced and integrated), and in which almost everything proves to be connected.
Great works of art shouldn't have to throw their message into the audience's faces. Instead, as the audience looks at their more superficial aspects of beauty or excitement, they should be drawn into their subtleties and more interesting depths. In Lone Star, everything - the arguments about race and the past, the tangible sense of a real community, the subversiveness of the film's ending - flows from what is at base simply a good story. This film is one of the outstanding achievements of 90s American cinema 10/10.