FAR AND AWAY
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
FAR AND AWAY is a film direct by Ron Howard, from a script by Bob Dolman. It stars Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Thomas Gibson, and Robert Prosky. Rate PG-13, due to language, violence, subject matter.
FAR AND AWAY has quite rightly been described, as it was in the Seattle P-I, as an historic romance novel, of the Danielle Steele variety, come to the screen. Gothic romances have been with us for decades, but this may be a new subgenre for the films. It is far less interested in history than it is in romance, and little things like historical verity, reality, even probability and the normal passage of time are likely to be swept aside by the rush of superhuman emotions, mostly restrained until the last scene.
This is not to say that FAR AND AWAY is not as enjoyable a piece of cornball as you're likely to encounter for some time. It has some of that old epic sweep, it has pace and movement that only bogs down once -- and that for a little romantic interlude -- and it has wonderful set pieces. And like all of Ron Howard's films it is safely sanitized and irrepressibly wholesome. Even the whores are as safe and clean and friendly as the Ladies' Sewing Circle.
I think it is profitable to see FAR AND AWAY as acts of contrition on the parts of Howard (for BACKDRAFT) and Cruise and Kidman (for DAYS OF THUNDER). This film is vastly superior to either of those, although the fire photography looks mighty familiar.
Howard and writer Bob Dolman have given us an old-fashioned narrative that is rousing, funny, and uplifting, and heartwarmingly romantic. Howard has used his 70-millimeter process (Super Panavision 70) to wonderful effect, especially in the really big, really sharp territorial shots, and most especially in the Land Rush sequence, which is rousing as all hell and full of details glimpsed for a second or five in the pell-mell onslaught of people, animals and landscape. I also enjoyed the bare-knuckle fight sequences; one cannot help but cheer Cruise on to victory each time he strips off his shirt. Of course, it is all shameless, predictable, and shallow. But what the hell! it's also great fun.
Cruise and his wife Nicole Kidman do creditable jobs with their roles. I am beginning to think, though, that Howard for all his facility is not a woman's director. It certainly seemed to me that a great opportunity was passed up in the creation of Shannon's character. She could have been a truly fascinating woman, instead she remains only, half-understood, half-realized. Cruise, on the other hand, appears to have taken his character about as far as the script would allow. Of course, it is possible that he is a better actor than she, but it's not a pretty thought and one which I am loathe to entertain.
The supporting actors are a mixed bag, generally good, but uneven. Robert Prosky who played Shannon's land-owner father was pretty close to perfect, a man whose desire for freedom was every bit as strong as it was submerged by his wife's powerful personality. I don't have many of the cast members' names in front of me. The part of the wife was excellent, however, and grew in an interesting way. The main heavy, the estate manager (was that Thomas Gibson?), is probably too dark, too heavy, too one-sided to be interesting, but the actor gave it his all and made us feel some serious animosity toward character. I have more of a problem with the Irish villagers in the first part of the movie, viz., they are so darn cute. This is Howard cleaning up history for us, I fear, just as he managed to de-odorize the Irish slums of New York, as well as pass up an opportunity or two to show how really rotten the system was that used and owned the immigrants to the benefit of the bosses.
I was most distressed, however, to see the incredibly short shrift Howard and Dolman gave to the Native Americans whose land was being stolen from them to make the Land Rush possible in the first place. We have a -- what? -- five second shot of three Indians, one wearing part of a U.S. cavalry uniform, watching the white settlers line up for the start of the Rush. I think they might spared a line or two of dialog to set the record straight. That the Cimarron Strip was the last of Indian Territory, that major treaties were being broken one more time, that the land was already occupied. And so forth, and so on. Familiar you say? Sure it is. And worth repeating every once in a while. Like the story of the Holocaust, the World War II Holocaust, that is.
But still, and despite the above, or maybe because of it, Ron Howard has given us a rip-snorting, rootin'-tootin' epic of the Irish in America, by extension of all immigrants, an epic that sweeps us along and entertains us mightily.
I can recommend FAR AND AWAY to most of you even at full prices.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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