1922

This made-for-Netflix film (I don’t mean that as pejorative) is about a mid-western farming family in 1922. The husband is happy with his life and looks forward to gradually expanding his holdings, especially with the land his wife has inherited from her father.  She on the other hand hates their life and wants to move to Omaha.  He knows how she feels and hates her as a result.  Their teen-aged son is at first oblivious to and then torn between their conflicting attitudes.  In the end, his romance with the daughter of a neighboring farmer pulls him decisively in one direction.  The film is dark from beginning to end—dark visually: the interior shots of the farmhouse, the shots of the surrounding land.  But what is most dark about the film is its portraits of the people who live in the house.  I suspect that the author/director (Zak Hilditch, working from a Stephen King story) had in mind some sort of Shakespearean source (King Lear? Macbeth?).  But in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies the central characters begin with awareness of their stations in life, and when their falls occur, they appreciate the descent.  The farmer at the center of this film—the tragic hero—is more like a small-time criminal.  He plots murder out of greed and ambition and enlists the assistance of his son because he is the only available accomplice.  Where are the vestiges of dignity or virtue in this man? He seems more the subject of a sociological study of psychopathology than the main figure in a tragic fall.  When the film ends as he sits in the collapsing wreck of the farmhouse, staring at the spirits of the people he has intentionally or unintentionally killed, it seems only just.  What we have here is a passion play without passion, a small and well-made film that aspires far beyond its capabilities to be more than what it is.