It's easy to forget that our current distaste for war and gung-ho patriotism is a fairly recent one, due in no small part to the proliferation of global communication. It's harder to kill somebody when you have the chance to talk to them, and many wars in the past had mutual isolation and disinformation for catalysts. War is impossible for one person to fully comprehend - statistics and battlefield footage are mere suggestions of forces much greater than the individual, and if the battles aren't taking place in their own back yard they might as well not exist. The problem is that a fantasy vision of war is essential for it to continue, as the general populace wouldn't want to throw anybody into battle if they experienced it firsthand. World War I was a distant, incomprehensible mess to America, and we only got involved near the end after a great deal of resistance. It never reached our soil, but another incomprehensibility did - the influenza epidemic of 1918, which took between 50 and 100 million lives, eclipsing the casualties of the war. Mostly known as the screenwriter of To Kill a Mockingbird, playwright Horton Foote depicted the intersections of these two forces with meticulous detail and sensitivity in 1918, a slice of his massive theater trilogy The Orphan's Home Cycle and a reminder that excitement, values and delusion are closely related.
Set in a small Texas town in the fall of Guess When, 1918 follows the lives of the Robedauxs, including the tailor Horace (William Converse-Roberts), his pregnant wife Elizabeth (Hallie Foote, Horton's daughter) and his ne'er-do-well brother Brother (Matthew Broderick). As the war draws to a close the pressure of joining the cause comes to the Robedauxs, and Horace is intent on taking an offer to hire a doctor to lie about his health so he can stay with his wife. He's also trying to locate his father's grave - he lost a three-year-old daughter to the flu and he wants everybody buried together. Brother is more enthusiastic about joining up, but most of his information comes from newsreels and he talks too much about German spies in neighboring towns. His gambling debts make an uneasy garnish to his snideness. A misguided group of good ol' boys march around town in makeshift uniforms, waiting for a tour that will never come. Gossip spreads like wildfire, and debates spring up as to whether one can legitimately be a dual citizen (especially with Germany). Everybody hears the wails of mothers who have lost their children, including Bessie, an emotionally challenged girl who visits tge Robedauxs from time to time. None of this is helped by Horace getting the flu, of course.
The story keeps a real distance from the Big Parade overseas, and in reseaeching this film I found critics who were disappointed in the film's unwavering focus on uninvolved people. I think that's what makes the movie interesting. Everybody's afraid of the big dangers but they don't have enough distrust in others to peer behind the curtain. Foote's interests lie more in exploring the attitudes and customs that kept such a proper face on things in disaster times, and the film's best moments of pathos come from characters trying desperately to maintain composure. The acting is pitch-perfect, with the unfortunate exception of the eternally wooden Matthew Broderick, who was in the original stage production and may have been the reason the movie got financed. Shot on location in Texas, director Ken Harrison opens up the landscape with enormous warmth and attention to shot composition and lighting. The perennial problem with adapting plays to the screen, how to expand the setting, is dealt with elegantly and without force. While I think the movie stands just fine on its own, it's good to keep in mind that it's only one ninth of the whole cycle, so I suspect I'd feel much differently about everything that had happened if the rest of Foote's magnum opus came to my DVD player.
The film is very, VERY small scale, so if you're not interested in a highly detailed period portrait you may end up ejecting the disc into the wastebasket. The DVD is way out of print and used copies are expensive, so I'd try your local library instead of dropping $35 on a movie you may not like. If you're game for it and you have a taste for modern theater you'll be just peachy, and perhaps an increase in fandom can bring more of Foote's Robedaux saga to the big screen.
~PNK
The story keeps a real distance from the Big Parade overseas, and in reseaeching this film I found critics who were disappointed in the film's unwavering focus on uninvolved people. I think that's what makes the movie interesting. Everybody's afraid of the big dangers but they don't have enough distrust in others to peer behind the curtain. Foote's interests lie more in exploring the attitudes and customs that kept such a proper face on things in disaster times, and the film's best moments of pathos come from characters trying desperately to maintain composure. The acting is pitch-perfect, with the unfortunate exception of the eternally wooden Matthew Broderick, who was in the original stage production and may have been the reason the movie got financed. Shot on location in Texas, director Ken Harrison opens up the landscape with enormous warmth and attention to shot composition and lighting. The perennial problem with adapting plays to the screen, how to expand the setting, is dealt with elegantly and without force. While I think the movie stands just fine on its own, it's good to keep in mind that it's only one ninth of the whole cycle, so I suspect I'd feel much differently about everything that had happened if the rest of Foote's magnum opus came to my DVD player.
The film is very, VERY small scale, so if you're not interested in a highly detailed period portrait you may end up ejecting the disc into the wastebasket. The DVD is way out of print and used copies are expensive, so I'd try your local library instead of dropping $35 on a movie you may not like. If you're game for it and you have a taste for modern theater you'll be just peachy, and perhaps an increase in fandom can bring more of Foote's Robedaux saga to the big screen.
~PNK
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