Blue Sky

The film is about the relationship of husband and wife, their troubles and how they cope with it. It also had a side plot about underground nuclear testing, which I don't think was that powerful or had that much of an impact for it to carry though as the finale, which also seem to be wrapped up uneventfully.

But the main story is their troubled relationship, and how through good, bad and worse they get through it with each other's support. Jessica Lange's performance as an unstable woman was amazing, not over the top in which it would have been typically done, but was portrayed truely and its fine nuance conveyed the subtle change in her mental state.

This film had some really interesting scenes that made me watch the movie twice but that was enough. The story overall is a bit too messy.

Jessica Lange was a hoot as the manic-depressive flirtatious wife of Army Major "Hank Marshall." Boy, poor Hank had his hands full with "Carly" as his wife. Lange plays the role a little over-the-top but that's what makes her interesting here. It turns out to be a military soap opera film, if there is such a thing.

The soap angle came in not just between the Major trying to control his out-of- control wife, but the couple's poor daughters who had to live with this under their roof. Amy Klempp and Amy Locane played the sympathetic daughters.

There's more to the story, such as incidental things like nuclear bomb testing but, believe-it-or-not, that takes a back seat to Jones and Lange's marital woes. Frankly. when I write this, over 10 years after seeing the film, I wonder why I bothered watching this twice. I was a big fan of Jones, and maybe that was it, plus Lange looked good back then playing the blonde bombshell. This is one of the last films in which she looked this good as her "Tootsie" days were starting to wan.

Just as Shohei Ohtani cannot, by himself, take the Anaheim Angels to baseball greatness neither can Jessica Lange lift this film into the realm of goodness. Tony Richardson's last movie remains, after twenty nine years and despite Ms. Lange's powerful performance, a decent but flawed work.

The flaws, of course, can mostly be laid at the word processors of scenarists Rama Laurie Stagner, Arlene Sarner and Jerry Leichting. Not content to tell a simple but moving story of a troubled marriage between a too extroverted, aging Southern belle and a too introverted intellectual, set on an oppressive army base (are there any other kind?) in the South in the early sixties...think "Reflections In A Golden Eye" meets "Woman Under The Influence"...they concoct a truly ludicrous, 1970s, anti government paranoia tale complete with underground nuke tests, fallout, psychiatric incarceration and a kindly, bearded AEC official coming to the rescue (unfortunately, way too late to save the film). And so, by act three, we have left the relatable realm of relationships and recognizable emotions for Hollywood liberalism at its most amok. Or, to put it another way, we've gone from a good, gritty Tony Richardson film to Alan Pakula or Martin Ritt on a bad day.

Bottom line: Richardson shoulda gone out with the kitchen sink, not the paper shredder. Give it a C plus.

PS...Almost as depressing as Richardson's too early demise is seeing the star of "The Last Picture Show", twenty one years after that masterpiece, reduced to a non credited cameo as a cowboy with radiation poisoning.

In its only nomination in the Oscar sweepstakes for 1994 Jessica Lange won for Best Actress in Blue Sky. After watching Blue Sky I can certainly see why.

Blue Sky is set in the years of the Kennedy Administration and it's plot concerns a dedicated Army Major, Tommy Lee Jones and his family consisting of wife Jessica Lange and daughters Amy Locane and Anna Klump.

Jones is more than an army officer, he's a nuclear scientist and deeply concerned about the collateral effects of radiation on the population. I well remember the time. President Eisenhower in his second term of office made an unilateral executive decision to stop above ground nuclear testing, but the Russians continued. I well remember Premier Khrushchev in a bit of saber rattling, exploded a one hundred megaton hydrogen bomb.

Anyway President Kennedy decided at one point to resume nuclear testing to get the Russians back to the bargaining table for a nuclear test ban treaty. That's the background for this story and we all know that the first thaw in the Cold War was that test ban treaty that was ratified during the summer of 1963.

Anyway Jones is looking to ban it all, writing all kinds of reports that the army isn't taking too seriously and in fact transfers him from California to Alabama where he's told in no uncertain terms by his commander Powers Boothe to cool it. The military wasn't exactly thrilled with what Kennedy was trying to do.

But Jones has some pressing concerns on the domestic front. Jessica Lange is a lusty woman with needs and her husband isn't doing right by her. She looks like Marilyn Monroe and really does have all the army polishing its brass for her. Including Powers Boothe who sends Jones away so they can play.

It all ends in disaster, but Jessica summons up a lot more character than we would have first given her credit for to right the situation. It's in those last scenes that Jessica Lange brought home Oscar.

Young Chris O'Donnell is in the cast as well as Carrie Snodgrass as the son and wife of Boothe and O'Donnell the young man about to go to West Point finds out just what kind of rat his father really is. And Boothe does very well as the rat.

But in the last twenty minutes of the film Jessica's change in character dominates the film and it's reason enough to check out Blue Sky

It is always a pleasure to watch giants in some film which is driven not by effects , explosions and rap-style language but by old-fashioned story and , simply , eye-popping acting , and two main actors , Mr T. Jones and , specially , Mme J. Lange deliver this in full . This smaller , cheaper film deals with the relationships between the military personnel and their spouses , where J. Lange portrays perfectly a lascivious southern belle with too grand illusions of an acting career, who with her sexual escapades becomes a sort of house-hold name in all the bases her husband is sent to , she being slightly neurotic , while tensions and constant arguments between the two are a norm , and their two beautiful daughters watch this in silence , being even more mature then their own mother . It is interesting to see Jones 's character always forgiving his wife , loving her completely , never hitting her , or calling her names .And when the viewer is almost certain that a typical and clichéd climax is inevitable , i.e. a fight between the couple with him stabbing his wife , the film takes a completely different turn , where Lange's character shows her southern true mettle and love for her husband, who becomes a victim of higher national interests . Briefly , a school of great , traditional acting ,light years away from today's self-proclaimed thespians with artificially rounded lips or feminine neurotic outbursts for no reasons , being on the same level as small children demanding a candy .