A Thousand Acres as Movie is Melodramatic and Bogus
Perhaps Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "A Thousand Acres" was a bit over-rated. For one thing, the book's "dark secret" seemed utterly implausible. I just didn't believe that the book's protagonist and narrator, a 37-year-old Iowa farm wife named Ginny, could have completely repressed the fact that her father had sex with her when she was 15 years old, night after night, for a year. For True Believers in "Repressed Memory Syndrome," this might sound like gospel: I found it melodramatic and bogus. Furthermore, the sensitive-unto-death narrative voice was dissonant and grating: Ginny came across as too intelligent and self-aware to be as clueless and numb as she
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Above all, they play it too safe. Perhaps if they had added new material, approached Smiley's story from different directions, they could have made a film that would have been truer to the spirit, if not the letter, of her book. Ploddingly literal, "A Thousand Acres" is basically a star vehicle that relies on superior acting to redeem it. It does have superior acting, but that's not nearly enough.
The story involves a tyrannical old patriarch, Larry Cook (Jason Robards, whose skills are not really utilized), who, apparently forgetting the unpleasant fate that befell Lear, decides to give his farm away to his three daughters -- Ginny (Jessica Lange), Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Caroline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Larry -- Lear; Ginny -- Goneril; Rose -- Regan; Caroline -- Cordelia. Get it? But Smiley turns that phallocentric old fable on its politically incorrect head: Instead of being hounded to madness and despair by evil children, this patriarch is the evil one, a rigid, remorseless old man who, we learn, seduced not just Ginny but Rose, too. And he doesn't need to be driven to madness: He goes pretty much off the deep end, for reasons that are never explained, right after he gives away his property.
Ginny and Rose, like their horrific Shakespearean namesakes,
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Larry Cook, father of Ginny, Rose, and Caroline as well as the main landowner of the thousand-acre farm, is the next character to be analyzed. He is introduced in the book as farmer that is looked up to by his community due to his success. He is the antagonist within the novel and slowly loses his sanity as the story progresses. This loss of sanity is due to Larry’s power and greed that take over him. It begins with his idea to retire and give his land evenly to Rose and Ginny, but after this massive life shift occurs he starts acting irrationally and lashes out at his previous caretakers. The foreshadowing of the major storm aligns perfectly with Larry’s final breaking point with Ginny, “His voice modulated into a scream, ‘Or tell me what I can do and what I can’t do. You barren whore! I know all about you, you slut.” (Smiley, pg. 452). After this, Rose talks to Ginny about their father raping them for years,
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