There's no greater memory for someone who grew up in the country for those beautiful breezy days of spring or fall (and sometimes a non-humid summer) when picnic tables are lined in red gingham clothes, lawn chairs are strewn around for arriving guests and the smell of the grill mixes with flowers, later joined by the chirping of crickets. Close neighbors join in for glorious get-togethers, joyous music plays and a family genuinely gets along. The scene of sisters Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer, their husbands, Pfeiffer's children and a few friends is a celebration of the deed of the thousand acres of farm being turned over by their father, Jason Robards, to them.
The happiness is short lived with a very bitter argument occuring out of the blue after Robards receives a phone call from his estranged youngest daughter, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and drunkenly assails Lange and Pfeiffer, insisting that he's going to get the farm back. Secrets are revealed between the sisters that are very horrifying, turning this modern King Lear into a real monster. Robards is incredible spilling the vile he feels, and it comes down to his anger over aging, the power he's suddenly lost and their making demands on him that takes away the parental rights that he abused when the girls were young.
It was a fabulous casting idea to put Pfeiffer and Lange together as sisters. They are fabulous together, really seeming like they came from the same womb. Leigh, not as much of a focus, is the definitive outsider, having gotten away, yet suddenly wanting not just a piece of the pie, but the entire orchard that made the apples. Jocelyn Moorhouse does a fabulous job of turning this modern adaption of "King Lear" into a well done analogy of family secrets.
Colin Firth, Keith Carradine and Kevin Anderson provide noble support. Pat Hingle is amazing in a smaller role as a character obviously based on the Duke of Cornwall in "King Lear". This was better for me the second time around, perhaps because I'd seen two full versions of "Lear" on the New York stage in the past ten years. The beauty of the land never leaves you, this coming from someone who grew up in a small town surrounded by the beauty and yes, the secrets. It never leaves you even though you can never go back.
The happiness is short lived with a very bitter argument occuring out of the blue after Robards receives a phone call from his estranged youngest daughter, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and drunkenly assails Lange and Pfeiffer, insisting that he's going to get the farm back. Secrets are revealed between the sisters that are very horrifying, turning this modern King Lear into a real monster. Robards is incredible spilling the vile he feels, and it comes down to his anger over aging, the power he's suddenly lost and their making demands on him that takes away the parental rights that he abused when the girls were young.
It was a fabulous casting idea to put Pfeiffer and Lange together as sisters. They are fabulous together, really seeming like they came from the same womb. Leigh, not as much of a focus, is the definitive outsider, having gotten away, yet suddenly wanting not just a piece of the pie, but the entire orchard that made the apples. Jocelyn Moorhouse does a fabulous job of turning this modern adaption of "King Lear" into a well done analogy of family secrets.
Colin Firth, Keith Carradine and Kevin Anderson provide noble support. Pat Hingle is amazing in a smaller role as a character obviously based on the Duke of Cornwall in "King Lear". This was better for me the second time around, perhaps because I'd seen two full versions of "Lear" on the New York stage in the past ten years. The beauty of the land never leaves you, this coming from someone who grew up in a small town surrounded by the beauty and yes, the secrets. It never leaves you even though you can never go back.