Amazon.com video review:
Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer are quietly dazzling in this
underrated adaptation of
Jane Smiley's best-selling
modern version of King
Lear. The two play sisters of a stubborn, alcoholic Iowa farmer (Jason
Robards), who decides to leave his fertile farm to them and their youngest
sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It is a decision that rends the family,
setting siblings against one another and forcing long-held secrets out of
their guilty closets. The family dynamics become ever more destructive, and
the refuge of sanity the two older sisters have created may be their only
salvation. It's a tragedy not quite on a Shakespearean scale, but anyone
who appreciates the difficulties of a dysfunctional family will relate to
the heartbreak--and the promise of redemption. Pfeiffer especially is
breathtaking as the good housewife Rose, whose rage at her father and her
husband is never far from her placid surface. --Anne Hurley
