Bound for Glory

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Audience Member Beautifully shot film that, while is slowly paced, kept me interested throughout. David Carradine is unrecognisable as Woody Guthrie. Carradine doesn't use an over-the-top Texas accent and acts very well in more dramatic scenes and also has some great comedic timing. He should've been Oscar nominated for the role. The only parts I got tired of was Guthrie wrecking everything when he gets mad which got pretty tiring. The characters Guthrie meets along the way never felt out of place or uninteresting. I'm a bit conflicted about the film fictionalising every character except for Guthrie, his wife and his kids. If the film was based on Guthrie's autobiography why was there a need to fictionalise almost every other character. The film deservedly won Best Cinematography for its beautiful shots of the American scenery when Guthrie was riding on passing trains. As with every other film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar that year, it was better than the eventual winner Rocky but was not as good as the other nominees; All The President's Men, Network and Taxi Driver (which should have won). Overall, a film that is really worth a watch especially for its acting and cinematography. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/11/23 Full Review dave s Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory is not your standard biopic. It is less about the life of Woody Guthrie than it is about the experiences that shaped his life and inspired his music. David Carradine is excellent as Guthrie, who leaves his family in dust-swept west Texas to travel to California, where jobs are rumored to be plentiful and the future appears to be promising. Beyond the great music and solid performances, Haskell Wexler's Oscar-winning cinematography is stunning, effectively capturing the feel of the arid landscape through muted tones, perfectly framed shots, and grainy stock. Of note, Bound for Glory was the first film to use Garrett Brown's recently introduced Steadicam technology in a scene that follows Carradine into a crowd of migrants looking for work. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review steve d Far too slow despite the talented cast. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member I wanted to applaud this film more than I did as I admired the way it went against genre conventions and moved at it's own pace but for a two and a half hour film I did not feel like it covered enough ground to justify it's running time. This is also one of those films that is so beautiful to look at and clearly each little detail had so much care put into it that it is easy to get caught up in admiring these details without ever actually engaging with the story or the socialist ideas that the film supports. At the end of the day I wanted to feel that I knew Guthrie more than I did and needed some sense of real tension or drama in the film. That said, this is the best film directed by Hal Ashby, a director whose work I have not liked all that much. In the 1930s Texas faces the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression which pushes many to leave the state and head toward greener pastures in California where there is rumored to be work and great opportunities. Sign painter Woody Guthrie, David Carradine, does not earn enough doing odd jobs to take care of his supportive wife Mary, Melinda Dillon, and their three young children. He chooses to leave and tapes a note to their fridge informing her that he will send for them when he has enough money. He relies on hitchhiking and catching rides in boxcars against the wishes of the corrupt police to make his way to California and through his experiences with other poor and downtrodden people hurt by the system he comes to believe that a new system needs to be put in place. When he meets union organizer Ozark Bule, Ronny Cox, in California he takes more of an interest in music and becomes more active in campaigning for higher wages for the workers who are taken advantage of. There are several stunning shots in the film that seem surprisingly complicated for the time as it is difficult to imagine how they staged the giant dust cloud that hits Pampa, Texas and how the dust sweeps through small houses. As Guthrie treks across the United States there are a few shots reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath (1940) but Haskell Wexler's cinematography often paints a different portrait as everything is coated in red dust and rich brown earthy tones. The trains and cars would all appear to be authentic for the time period and even the small paintings that hang behind Guthrie as he negotiates with his employer are beautiful and fit perfectly into the vivid world set up by the film. Despite the tragedy of their situation there is something in the way the film looks that makes small town American struggles look romantic. Wexler makes every scene in the film look natural and lifelike as you can imagine hundreds of people trampling through every location we witness. Fortunately he earned the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work and gave the film one of it's greatest assets, one that unfortunately distracts from it's content for the majority of it's running time. Pacing may have been one of the film's biggest issues as it probably would have been better as a film about an everyman caught up in the issues of this era rather than a biopic about a famous musician. This sets us up with expectations and so we are confused by the fact that it takes an hour and a half for Guthrie to really take up performing and he spends more time out in the fields as a union member than as a singer. In the last twenty minutes a lot of conflict is suddenly introduced as he and his wife have their first argument and the grip of the more conservative executives begins to weigh on Guthrie. I found it odd that Guthrie abandons his family for an unknown amount of time, it could have been a few months or many years, and yet his wife is not upset at him for leaving her with young children to raise alone and without financial aid. The film is occupied with details that seem unnecessary as I understand the need to touch on Guthrie's political views as they largely defined him but the fact that he was a womanizer takes up a disproportionate amount of screen time as he beds several women throughout the film and each of these scenes stretch out for a long time. Screenwriter Robert Getchell, responsible for the lovely Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), could have done better to not wrap up all of this in the space of two minutes with Guthrie walking away from everything but he could be praised for not taking the easy way out when he could have in other cases. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Audience Member The best movie song ever sung: This Land is Your Land! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Good bio-pic of great Woodie Guthrie. Too bad Arlo did not make an appearance. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/05/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Bound for Glory

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