Movie Notes: The Grapes Of Wrath
= 4 stars
Starring Henry Fonda, John Carradine, Jane Darwell
Directed by John Ford
Synopsis
During the 1930s, ex-con Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns home to find his sharecropper family destitute and leaving Oklahoma for a better life in California.
The Good
- Documents the effects of the dust bowl and the Great Depression on a farm family. The hard economic times force average Americans in direct competition with each other — the family arrives in California only to find other farmers exploiting their cheap labor for personal gain. The desperation of being out of both work and options is underlined by moody, deep black tones that threaten to swallow characters whole.
- Dramatic contrast between rich and poor, farmers and city folk, tradition and new technology, the past and the future.
- Tom Joad (Fonda), to these younger eyes, resembles Willem DaFoe crossed with Jack Nicholson and Jimmy Stewart. Joad is compellingly conflicted, as an ex-convict charged with homicide, and economic circumstance pushes him toward breaking the law to protect his family. Eventually, he threatens to strike back against the powers of oppression.
- Some amusement in California presented as a land of opportunity; today the Okies have a much shorter drive to the new destination state (Texas).
- Works as road picture, but a particularly bleak one — some moments are more like the Seventh Seal, in particular the look on the family’s faces as they enter a migrant worker camp, and slowly realize the opportunity they hoped for won’t prove that easy to come by as their plight is shared with so many others.
The Bad
- One possible ray of hope is a government-run “New Deal” labor camp, or forming a worker’s union. In today’s political climate, both would be rejected on the grounds of socialism, and unions are slowly being dismantled. The film’s answers — which may have seemed within the realm of possibility in 1940 — now come across as unintentionally fantastical.
Conclusion
Even in 2010, the American economy remains saddled with foreclosures, exploitative banks, and long-term unemployment due to hard economic times — and it seems we have even less solutions than before. All we can do is ask free-market capitalism to solve its own failings. Recommended.
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