gayeshortland

Compelling watching and some terrific performances. A storyline that kept up the interest and camera work that knew how to caress its subjects. So what's my gripe? After several days' thinking about it, I have to conclude it was lesbian fantasy more than the realistic drama it claims to be. Treasure had beauty and impact and I LOVED Shadow's mobile face - but we might as well have been watching two teenage boys - theirs was a lean male beauty. And as for Brownie!! Great performance but why did she also have to have the physique of a man -- a squat brutal one in this case? There wasn't any sense that we were watching ordinary women in a terrible predicament. And had none of them men or children on the outside? Where was their history? That older woman in group session was almost stuck in to compensate for the lack of all that. Secondly I agree that Treasure's brooding impassive personality prevented us from knowing her thoughts and really feeling for her and in the end robbed the film of emotional impact.

There is little to add to the eloquent appreciations of Wild River by other users. Still, I want to pay my tribute. My father took me to see the film when I was a little girl and it made such an impression on me I have been searching for it for years. Odd, since I remembered nothing of the plot, retaining only fleeting images of autumn colours, Lee Remick's autumnal hair, the old ferry, an indelible impression of Montgomery Clift's face, the old woman surrounded by still 'figures in a landscape'. And the creation of a unique atmosphere so tangible, so lyrical, so elegiac it stayed with me for 40+ years. I've been wanting to know why it clung to me so. And wondering why it seemed to have disappeared without trace. This Christmas, in the fullness of time, my niece presented me with the DVD and I have at last seen it again. Why did it affect me so profoundly? That one's easy. Why had the film disappeared. That one's complex, as you know. What I hadn't expected was that stunning performance from the incomparable Jo Van Fleet. No Oscar? Were they mad? It is intensely interesting and sobering to reflect how politics can hold art hostage.

A sad sad attempt to capitalise on "action-hero" potential in Homer's classic. The writer should be tied to somebody's chariot and dragged until he promised never to write a screenplay again. Brad, Orlando, Peter et al did their level best but were fighting a losing battle against a poor script. Brad certainly enlivened the landscape with his skirmishings. Shots of the aristocracy of Troy peeping over the battlements at warring heroes were positively Monty Pythonesque. And why, in an age when audiences are exhibiting a ravenous hunger for fantasy material, did they choose to leave out the gods? And how can we forgive them for filling up the screen-time with a sugary little love story while omitting such things as the great Cassandra with her prophecies of doom?