Movie Review

I will give it a second chance, but I must say I wasn't as in love with the movie The Grapes of Wrath as I thought (hoped) I'd be. The Grapes of Wrath being my favorite book of all time, I think I probably expected too much, I might've piled on too much expectation/hype. It is a really really good movie, but I think I was expecting more. It having to be wrapped up in 2+ hours, I found it jumped past too much; right away it seemed like they were already in California. I guess it's more a testament to the details in the novel, while reading it you feel gritty dirt in your teeth, you feel the rocking bounce of the car held together by string. After a while you feel like you're taking the tarp off and putting it back on again and again, you can feel the scraping on the pan as Ma Joad tries to save all the grease she can. Maybe it's just not possible for a movie to live up to that. After first viewing, I can't say it's as close to the book in terms of greatness as To Kill a Mockingbird is to it's own novel. And the ending was disappointing to me, the "we're gonna be allllllllright!" that to me differed greatly to the tone in the book.

The cast was great though; you feel like they're a real family. They always seem to be flapping into each other and talking to nobody in particular. Tho someone needs to explain how here we are in the thick of the Depression, nobody's got food to eat and everybody's beyond rail thin, yet somehow, the person in charge of the food is about 300 pounds. Hmm. Seriously, I think I saw a whole chicken fall out of the corner of Ma Joad's mouth in one scene

The look of the movie is incredible, that stark black and whiteness that's it's own character. A combination of bigness and nothingness til the horizon.

One thing you're reminded of in a movie like that is how naturally more handy/resourceful men were in generations past. You get the feeling that any one of 'em, they could start tinkering with that brokedick car and after a few hours you'd come back and they've rebuilt it as the Space Shuttle using some Brill Creem and a tit mouse. I doubt they sat at Rick's House of Lube flipping through Southern Living while someone change their oil for $36, know what I mean? Also, what's his face "living off the land" at the old Joad house. Skinning squirrels for food, boiling rainwater. If that's me the first thing I do is give up and sit and wait for somebody to invent Domino's Pizza.

And isn't it hard to believe or remember how people used to get together before computers and cell phones? Christ. TWICE Tom just happens to bump into Casey, each time about 1500 miles apart. "Oh, hey." When does that ever happen? Hell, I bump into my roommate in my loft, I'm mildly surprised. That I'm not homeless. No no, you know what I mean. And you could ask me to meet you across the street, but if I can't mapquest/hopstop how to get there and then call you to find out exactly where you are according to my GPS locator then I'm like fuck it, I'm not going. And god forbid I lose my cell phone, I'd be like "well, that's it, I will never ever see those people again." Meanwhile Tom's Mom was talking how relieved she was that he showed up just in time to go to California with them and he says "oh, I'da found you." Really? How the fuck is that?

As I said, I'll dial back the expectations a tad and watch again, try to appreciate it more for it's own thing than compare it to the book so much.