Far and Away
(1992)
I have to give due credit to popular Hollywood (alleged) freemason Little Ronnie Howard here. His martialling of the demands for scale in Far and Away is leaps and bounds beyond his rather pitiful floundering over a would-be franchise in Willow a few years earlier. That doesn’t make Far and Away any good, of course, not when its anchored by the resistible antics of poor-boy Tom and rich-girl Nicole, but it’s easy to see this as a test run for the voluminously more successful doomed period romance with Oirish hues Titanic. That one had a hook, of course (the big ship) and an actual boy and girl declaring undying love.
Joseph Donnelly: All saints preserve us!
This was their second of three pairings, and Tom’s lack of chemistry with a romantic co-star is only to be expected, even given a leg up by the same frictional class divide Jimbo would later employ. Tom’s Joseph Donnelly is, as mentioned, poor (and will you just listen to his Oirish accent!) Nicole’s Shannon Christie, a “corker”, and whose father’s men burned down Joseph’s family home, is rich. But circumstances throw them together in a journey to a brave new American world in 1892, and before long, they’re clashing on a surface level but adoring each other deep down. You know how it goes. Cruise is shrewd enough already by this point to know that, if he’s attempting a period romance, he also needs lots of action, so Joseph’s a prodigious pugilist. Throw in the Oklahoma land rush for a grand climax, and you’ve surely got a fool-proof hit on your hands?
Well, no. Cruise would right his ship quickly (that very December), but his post-Born on the Fourth of July Oscar contention had given way to a costly misfire in Days of Thunder, attempting to muster all the ingredients that made Top Gun so celebrated (I don’t mean critically, obviously), but achieving few of them beyond a sky-rocketing budget. That he followed it with this, which made even less money (it still did make money, just about) surely gave him pause, however briefly.
The kind of pause that tells him to stick to his wheel house and not go all accent-y on his audience, who aren’t all that gripped by his attempts to bulk up. Since they liked him as the “boy” next door. He was nearing the end of his young livewire phase here (another couple and he was done), and perhaps the reason this fizzles is less the western-ish trappings than that he doesn’t really command the story. Even when Joseph is front and centre, there’s a sense it’s less about him than the canvas, and Tom’s fanbase quite possibly realised that too. This isn’t as stolid as (many of) the Hollywood westerns of old, but it has the same unhurried posture (2 hrs 20 minutes of unhurried; I haven’t investigated the longer cut, I think I can live without it).
So what does Far and Away have to offer beyond dodgy accents, indifferent romance and a John Williams’ score that’s almost as great a crime to Ireland as Cruise’s delivery? Well, the 70mm vistas may not have earned Mikael Salomon an Oscar nomination, but one wouldn’t have been out of place. I’m not a fan of Ron Howard’s moviemaking prowess, and I’d contend that granting him the title “journeyman” would be an insult to all the talented journeymen out there, but he handles the genre switch-up here more proficiently than many of his attempts to plough a different furrow (his most suited mode is lightweight, style-less dramedy, hence Parenthood; his least, the blockbuster trappings of Robert Langdon). The picture largely feels of-a-piece, which isn’t in any way to suggest it observes authenticity or fidelity (heavens forbid and all saints preserve us!) Ron ensures there are parts for his family too (Shannon calls Clint a “spineless little fraction of a man”, because there’s nothing quite like your big brother making you feel small).
Joseph Donnelly: You’re not in Ireland anymore, you arrogant bastid!
Additionally, while there is much that is atrocious in the way of character dialogue and interaction, there are also some surprising gems. The screenplay is credited to Bob Dolman, formerly of Willow (but story by Ronnie), and yes, there’s black-toothed villainy of the unrepentantly evil brand from Stephen Chase (Thomas Gibson), but he gets to call Joseph a “lowborn blatherskite of filth”, so it isn’t all bad. Colm Meaney rather ridiculously forsakes a good earner at the first sign of Joseph suffering a defeat (“Get this loser out of my club!”), but he’s able to make the zinging stereotypes almost seem naturalistic for a spell. And if Joseph is prone to telling his brothers – one of whom is Jared Harris – “Shag off, the pair of ya”, prior to a dispiritingly jaunty fight (cue John Williams), Dolman has a remarkably high gems count for what is a determinedly unambitious project in terms of storytelling.
Shannon Christie: She’s got an awfully large chest, to be going to church.
Joseph Donnelly: All chests are equal in the eyes of the Lord.
“I’ve been all but raped and slaughtered” exclaims Shannon after skewering Joseph with a pitchfork. Robert Prosky pretty much walks off with the movie as her father, Daniel Christie, a likeable duffer who ups sticks stoically to the US when his home burns down. He’s fond of such drunken observations as “I recognise these hedges by their dullness” and philosophical asides like “Life is one long, mollifying fog”.
Then there’s Michelle Johnson, whose prize assets were a highlight of Blame it on Rio (also starring Nicole’s fellow Hollywood hermaphrodite Demi Moore). She’s burlesque dancer Grace, with an eye on Joseph, and rather naughtily lifts every scene she’s in, informing the jealous Shannon of her “brother”, “He had a charge of gunpowder in him that needed to go off” (she’s talking about Joseph fighting. That’s all, obviously). Seething. Shannon tells Joseph “Why don’t you go fondle that slut with the runaway tits?”
Events culminate in the Land Run of 1893, a rollicking adventure in which, as has been pointed out by others, a poor disinherited Oirishman takes possession of land formerly belonging to poor disinherited Native Americans (but then, he’s a very mercurial fellow, as evidenced by his penchant for hats). Obviously, the exact historical chain of such circumstances, given the preceding wash of the 1700 event, beckons further analysis, but on the face of it, Little Ronnie is triumphantly celebrating the displacement of native peoples (one can split hairs and say “But the Cherokee sold the land”, if that’s a balm).
Daniel Christie: His father’s father was an ass.
I’m doubtful Far and Away would have amounted to much, even with winning leads boasting winning chemistry, but it would surely be more liked than it is. It’s too episodic for its backdrop, which fundamentally lacks dramatic glue, as pretty as that backdrop may be. Nevertheless, Far and Away’s more innocuous than many of Howard’s later insults to aesthetic lustre.
