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.
#SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION IMDB MOVIE#
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 I'd like to see another go at it, maybe even starring Paul Newman as Henry.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. It would have to be a rather long movie, three hours or so, to portray the texture presented in the novel.
Obviously, a novel needs to be pared in order to fit into the standard movie length. There is a little second person narrative at the beginning of most chapters that pull the reader out of the story to offer additional flavor for the surroundings. The novel is written, mostly, in the first person from various points of view. One small portion of the novel is actually narrated by a dog. Also missed was the passing of narrative from character to character. Also missed were a lot of great scenes when Henry and Leland were children (Henry rescuing Leland from the Devil's Stovepipe, for one). We needed to see young Henry take charge ("we're gonna whup her") and begin the logging business that becomes the crux of the story. We needed to see Jonah fail and surrender to the dampness of the Pacific Northwest and desert his family. We needed to see Johah Stamper "heading west" with young Henry and his brother. But more to the point, the movie needed more back-story. Sarrazin probably could have pulled it off, but back in the early 70s, actors were into looking like people from the early 70s. I always pictured a sort of geeky-looking, bespectacled, beatnick-looking guy with scruffy hair, but still fairly short, and sideburns. But Michael Sarrazin didn't quite do it for me. I think Paul Newman, Henry Fonda and Lee Remick were perfect, as were many of the supporting cast. It hits the major point (brother returns to hometown to exact revenge on older sibling), but misses a lot of the flavor. The movie only captures the novel in broad strokes. While I see some merit in this movie version, I'd like to see someone have another go at it.
I have read Kesey's novel several times over the last 30 years or so.
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