Director: Paul Newman
Year Released: 1970
Rating: 3.0
In a blue-collar town in Oregon, there's a strike underway by loggers, but breaking that strike is the fiercely independent Stamper family, led by fierce stalwart Henry (Henry Fonda) and his three sons (Paul Newman, Richard Jaeckel and prodigal son Michael Sarrazin), who exist to "work, screw, eat and sleep." As a low-key adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel, Newman and screenwriter John Gay choose to focus on actual tree-cutting business (which is risky and dangerous work) instead of unspoken domestic affairs, pushing the 'dark secrets' of the family aside (such as an affair between Newman's character and half-brother Sarrazin's late mother) and choosing to all but silence the females in the house (Lee Remick, as Newman's wife, says little and does a lot of quiet worrying). When tragedy befalls the clan - which is well foreshadowed - the way Newman directs the scenes of Fonda and Jaeckel's deaths (occurring simultaneously) is impressively understated, not to mention the final scene with him and Sarrazin going back to work again with a tugboat and about a thousand logs which embodies the family's indomitable willpower. Of course, a more humane decision would have just joined the strike as a sign of solidarity in the first place, but that's just the lefty in me....
