t 'n t luoma

I said recently that I don’t like to know much about a movie before I see it. Perhaps this was another good example of why. I knew that this was supposed to be an excellent movie, and maybe my expectations were too high.

Here is an outline of the movie (don’t keep reading if you don’t want to know some of what happens at the end).

1) Girl meets boy. She’s high class, he’s a working man. They have stilted conversation.

2) Civil War breaks out (announced by North Carolina boys celebrating “We got our war” and firing guns into the sky.

3) Stereotypical Bad Guy (who has been clearly identified since the beginning) steps forward. He and his sons won’t be fighting in the war, they’ll stay at home (cue omnious music here).

4) Men go off to war. Boy kisses Girl just as they are leaving for war.

5) War turns out to be bloody and violent. (Subtle message: War is bad, and not fun like the foolish mountain men of North Caroline were expecting it would be.) Back home, things are bad. Stereotypical Bad Guy and his sons are taking advantage of the women. Crops are not growing. Girl’s father who has a “weak chest” dies. She lets their negros free, and can’t tend to the farm herself, but is too prideful to accept help from others.

6) Boy is shot. Unlike minor characters who are shot/injured, he lives. He recovers and decides to desert and head back home. Cut away to “back home” and Stereotypical Bad Guy and his sons announce that anyone who deserts the army or anyone who harbors a deserter will be guilty of treason. Cue omninous/foreshadowing music.

7) Girl meets tough-as-nails girl who helps her get the farm back together. Says she expects to eat for payment and we are expected to ignore that girl didn’t have enough food for herself, nevermind someone else. Girl sells piano for food, becomes more like tough-as-nails girl.

8) Boy tries to get home, gets caught, gets free, tries to find shelter, runs into lonely widow (with freakishly strange looking baby), runs into evil Yankee soldiers, keeps heading home.

9) Back home, Other Family has their sons come back, they get caught and father and sons are killed by Stereotypical Bad Guy (who also wants to get Girl into bed.) Tough-As-Nails Girl has father issues. Father returns. (Cue foreshadowing “I bet everything will be OK between them in the end” music.)

10) Stereotypical Bad Guy finds Tough-As-Nails Girl’s Father (who got caught because he didn’t listen to Tough-As-Nails Girl). He and his companion get shot (reminder: Tough-As-Nails Girl’s Father is not minor character, therefore he will live).

11) Girl and Tough-As-Nails Girl find her Father (shot but not dead) and help him recover.

12) Girl goes out and finds Boy. Girl and Boy are reunited. Girl and Boy decide that a wedding is useless, all they need to do is make a promise to each other and that will be good enough. Girl and Boy do what comes next. Girl tells Tough-As-Nails Girl that she had seen Boy in a vision but it looked like he was falling, like she was losing him. Cue dramatic foreshadowing can-you-guess-how-this-will-end music.

13) Next day Stereotypical Bad Guy and his sons find them. Tough-As-Nails Girl is shot (she looks dead, but will later appear just fine.) Boy is hero, and so he shoots them all, but just when you think everything is OK you realize he is shot, and since it is now the end of the movie and — after all, we warned you — Boy staggers just like Girl saw before in her vision and yes, he is dead (about the only good part of the movie).

14) Girl and Tough-As-Nails Girl go on to live happily ever after. Girl has Boy’s baby from that one night of passion and teaches her in the ways of the farming world. Tough-As-Nails Girl and her father have reunited. Tough-As-Nails Girl now wears sundress and has a child of her own (moral of the story: she just needed a man to bring out her feminine side).

I’m sure this was a much better book than the movie, which was little more than many things we’ve seen before. It reminded me of Titanic, which was nothing more than a B-class “love story” that happened to be on the Titanic. Hrm... the only good part of that movie was that the male love interest dies at the end too.

I will not be surprised if this movie wins a lot of awards. Hollywood likes a movie where: war is shown to be bad, lots of men are shown to be evil, men who take advantage of women are shot and killed, and at the end the woman beds her man so she gets a child (a girl) before he is killed by another evil man while defending her.