A Thousand Acres

Based on King Lear.  In this case, Lear is an Iowa farmer who leaves his farm to his older daughters when the third says she wants to think about the deal.  The big battle with the French army becomes a lawsuit to get the farm back which fails, and Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia become Ginny, Rose, and Caroline.  Glouchester and Edmund are minor characters, a neighboring farmer and his son.  Most of the basic plot details are there, though Edgar does not exist.  But the main twist is that this comes from the point of view of the "evil" sisters, Goneril/Ginny in particular.  They do not die together at the end.  Rose dies of breast cancer, and Ginny goes off into the sunset to raise Rose's daughters.  Rose's husband dies, like Cornwall, but in a drunk driving accident.  The change in point of view makes a big difference, making Lear much less sympathetic, though I've never had all that much sympathy for him.  I came to like Rose, even though Regan is one of the least sympathetic characters in the play.  Besides, Rose is played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who does a great job.  Caroline is a minor character who ends up coming across as a prissy brat more than anything else, which dissapointed me slightly.  Edmund, whose name is Jess in the movie, is barely worth mentioning, though he does have affairs with both sisters as in the play.  His father comes across as an old fool, as does Lear.  So the main point of this movie isn't really about fate or anything like that, like the play.  What it shows is what happens when white men are allowed to take their power for granted.  The main character is Ginny, but I found it hard to care about her-I did pity her, but not really in a good way.  Mostly that was because of the actress.  I don't remember seeing Jessica Lange in anything else, but I just couldn't stand her in this.  The other bad thing about this movie was the scenery.  There's a lot of use of cornfields and rolling farm land.  Since I don't live all that far from Iowa, scenery from an Iowa farm scares me.  Other than that it was a great movie every bit as thought-provoking as the original.

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