Check this movie, or the book out for that matter, if you enjoy strong character development, many tragic events, and stories that take place in the backwoods of Oregon. I think that was the biggest part in the novel, and they left it out. In the book Leeland fought Hank after everything bad happened to the Stampers, as a way to show Hank that he isn't in control. My only problem with this movie is that they didn't have the big rights of passage fight between Hank and Leeland. She and Hank used to be wild lovers, but Hank is working so hard because of the logger's strike, he pretty much shuts her out, and so she begins to drift away from Hank. She is probably the most complex character, simply because she only lets on what she thinks of her situation in little bits. And Finally, there is Lee Remick, who plays Hank's shut out wife Viv. Leeland just came back from the city, and he came back for the sole purpose of getting even with Hank. Hank and Henry treat him like crap almost the whole movie, because he doesn't belong. While all the other Stampers have leather skin and huge scars from wood chips, he has big bushy hair and is not a big barrel chested logger. Then there is Michael Sarrazin, who plays the outcast Leeland Stamper. He and Hank both head the family, and he and Paul Newman have a fractured relationship that is sort of crass, but still fun to see them on-screen together. He was a very interesting character, and Henry Fonda did a great job at playing him. Then there is Henry Fonda, who plays the eldest Stamper, Henry. Paul Newman always does a great job in his movies, but I think this one I especially like because he isn't as likeable as Cool Hand Luke or Fast Eddie (which are two other favorite characters and movies of mine). He plays his character like he is Hank Stamper. He was able to pull off this very icey dominance, even over his own father. First, Paul Newman, as usual, did an outstanding job. This is a movie for fans of great character development. I found that Paul Newman's direction was very well done. It has excellent acting, a great story (by the late great Ken Kesey), and some very intense scenes. Instead, they're clumsy, resentful enemies, and when they try to sabotage a Stamper lumber raft, they only wind up drifting out to sea - and having to be rescued by the Stampers.This is one of my favorite movies. Based on the best-selling novel from author Ken Kesey (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST), the story focuses on a two-fisted. All through the film, he avoids making the strikers into heavies and their hatred for the Stampers seem melodramatic. The game develops into a brawl, of course, but in an interesting way instead of going for a hard-action approach to the scene, Newman shoots it in a sort of twilight, bittersweet style. Some of the strikers invite some of the Stampers to a game of touch football. The direction of this scene is superb the reality and the danger of the huge logs are caught in a way that defines the men and their job better than any dialogue could.Īnother scene that reveals Newman's insight as a director takes place at a lumbermen's picnic. The Stamper men seem terribly small as they bring enormous trees crashing to the ground, wrap chains around them, and load them on trucks with big, muscle-bound machines. The best scene in the film takes place during a day of work. Newman shortchanges what you might call the indoor scenes in order to give us the lumber business. The character is left wavering, and we don't fully understand her relationship to her husband. There are a lot of things left fairly unclear, though I'm not quite sure what was on Remick's mind during most of the movie. Sarrazin, Newman's half-brother by Fonda's second wife, comes home to help -and also to mope, to get over a bummer of a year, and to suggest to Newman's wife ( Lee Remick) that maybe she should clear out from the obsessed Stamper clan. But the Stamper family continues to work in defiance of the strike, and despite the fact that Fonda has broken half the bones on his left side in an accident. The striking timber workers idly hang around the union office. The local merchants (especially the neurotic fellow who runs the movie theater and the dry cleaners) are going broke because money has dried up. The story takes place during a timber strike in the Northwest. He rarely pushes scenes to their obvious conclusions, he avoids melodrama, and by the end of "Sometimes a Great Notion," we somehow come to know the Stamper family better than we expected to. But then Newman starts tunneling under the material, coming up with all sorts of things we didn't quite expect, and along the way he proves himself (as he did with "Rachel, Rachel") as a director of sympathy and a sort of lyrical restraint.
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