Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4.0 out of 5 stars
An exemplary Film, 9 Jul 2009
I'd never heard of this before it came up on TV last night: a very fine, understated historical drama, based on a novel by John Ehle, who adapted his book for the film's screenplay. The journey referenced in the title is that undertaken by Jason Patric's character, August King: a widowed homesteader in 19th-century North Carolina, he's coming back from market having bought a cow, a pig and a couple of geese with the profits of a year's work. On the way, he ends up aiding the escape of runaway slave Annalees (Thandie Newton, here following up her performance, also as a slave, in the same director's `Jefferson in Paris'), and in the process loses his newly-acquired animals and his home (it's burnt down in retribution).
In large part due to the contribution of cinematographer Slawomir Idziak, perhaps best known for his work with Krzysztof Kieslowski (this was his first American feature), it's beautiful to look at; scenes often open with lingering shots of natural details (a butterfly, a leaf, a ray of sun through the trees), and, as the film progresses, there's a dark tint at the edges of the screen and a progressive lightening in the centre which gives an almost storybook, fairytale quality to the images.
Yet this isn't a film aiming for a fairytale quality: careful attention is paid to verisimilitude in costumes, dialogue, and narrative action. There are no manufactured moments of drama, overwrought confrontations and raised voices, but, rather, successions of small incidents (usually, the risk of being discovered by other people on the trail), the gradual development of narrative dilemmas, considerations both practical and moral - all of a piece with the careful attention paid to the complexities of character, of human behaviour.
It's worth noting, for example, the presentation of the simple settlements and homesteads as the result of hard work, of this simpler life as a tough way to survive. In losing everything, August doesn't go through the overblown tragic rigmarole of so many films which depict their hero's descent into hard times; rather, slaughtering one cow, losing one pig in a torrent, losing two geese in the forest - all these are big sacrifices, however matter-of-fact August is in the face of these hardships. Similarly, despite the occasional, rather jarring and overtly `weighty'/symbolic shots of an eagle soaring in the sky, what hope there is at the film's end - August's moral, if not physical, `salvation', Annalees' achieved escape - is not allowed to overwhelm the realities of the situation. Thus, the film's final scene (over which the credits role), depicts Annalees walking along the trail to the North, to her new life, overlaid with a quiet female vocal on the soundtrack, gently yodeling: no blaring, triumphant orchestra, no over-stated `hopeful' melodicism, just one voice and one person, moving out of shot, as if singing to themselves, uncertain of what might lie ahead (more hardship, despite nominal `freedom', for sure - think Lars Von Triers' `Manderlay' for what happens after one is freed).
Moments such as these, embodying as they do the balance between optimism and pessimism, criticism and something approaching myth-making, a consideration of realities and a desire to overcome these in a spirit of `goodness' and `love', are what distinguish `The Journey of August King', what render it more than what it could so easily have been: a project `worthy' in intentions but not in execution. It rings just right in keeping within the specifics of its situation, realizing that it's by being true to historical specifics (even if the actual story is fictional) and to human actions and motivations, rather than by ambitious over-reaching, that genuine scope can be accomplished. Indeed, I find myself surprisingly close to James Berardinelli's apparently overstated position: "The Journey of August King is as close to a flawless motion picture as is likely to be produced by the film industry (independent or mainstream)."
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