Nothing really happens, except for a number of actual- and near- deaths. Depresing beyond belief. I'm sorry I watched it, and can't see why anyone else would want to.
"It is bad for the mind to be part of unanimity."
I have to do a college report on this movie. Aren't I lucky?
UGH!
Good thing I dozed off a bit in the middle of the movie.
shareIt is the third movie of a trilogy. Did you watch the other two? Or are blood and guts movies more to your liking? To each his own; diversity makes the world go 'round as they say.
"Save your Dixie cups; the South shall rise again!"
A movie should have a point and a followable storyline to maintain interest at least.
"check the imdb cast list before asking who portrayed who in movies"
Well, it did...but not everyone will like it, I'll grant you that. My husband enjoys some movies or tv shows that just make me roll my eyes. He hates some things that I like. I guess my point is, people shouldn't knock a movie simply because they found it dull and uninteresting. To each his own, as they say.
"Save your Dixie cups; the South shall rise again!"
I couldn't think of any better ways to knock a movie. What should've been said about it? "Man that movie was dull and uninteresting, but I really really like it!"
"check the imdb cast list before asking who portrayed who in movies"
It helps to know a couple of things before watching something like this:
It's based on a play. In movies, action is carried by the pictures. In plays, _dialogue_ is action.
It helps to know something about Horton Foote's style -- he was an actor once, so he writes _for_ actors. Not everything is up front, out in the open, in your face. It only _seems_ like the characters are saying ordinary, dull, mundane things -- but Foote trusts that the actors in his plays will bring out the emotional subtext themselves.
It helps to know something about the influenza pandemic of 1918. During that stage of WWI, while everyone 'over here' was thinking about what was going on 'over there' in Europe, the flu was killing somewhere between 3 and 5% of the population. We had 116,708 war deaths in 1917-1919; between October 1918 and early 1919 there were 675,000 deaths from the flu in America alone (worldwide the toll was in the tens of millions).
I directed this piece once -- to me, the main question the play addressed was "How does a person survive an emotional catastrophe?" The war is an emotional catastrophe that everyone knows about and is somehow prepared for, but the flu would often strike so fast that someone would be perfectly healthy in the morning and by evening they would be dead. (There's an episode of DOWNTOWN ABBEY that deals with this very accurately.) So it's not only "How does a person survive an emotional catastrophe?", but even more importantly, "How does a person survive an emotional catastrophe for which there's no possible way to prepare?" How _do_ Horace and Elizabeth survive? -- not so much physically, they both survive the flu -- but how do they survive the loss of their baby (particularly since Horace was so delirious he had no way of knowing what was happening)? Many marriages have shattered under less horrible circumstances.
You might remember the scene where Horace talks about walking down the street and hearing the screams of grief coming from all the different houses. That actually happened -- the president of the university where I teach told me that although he was too young to have lived through that era his parents and grandparents weren't, and that was one thing he particularly remember about what they told him.
Some times you have to meet a film more than halfway. You can't expect the filmmakers to do all your work for you.
I appreciate what you said and understand the seriousness of the Great Influenza Epidemic of that period, but the storyline was not well adapted to a movie. The epidemic and the effects on the home front should be fleshed out a great deal more. It deserves a better vehicle of exposure to the masses. This production did not do that.
"check the imdb cast list before asking who portrayed who in movies"
As others have said here, this was part of a multi-play cycle. However, it's not part of a normal trilogy, but a trilogy of trilogies (i.e., nine one-act plays). This is the seventh play in the cycle, the opening play of the third trilogy. The plays are a fictionalized biography of Horton Foote's father, Albert Horton Foote Sr., named "Horace" in the cycle. All nine plays are designed so that they can be performed individually or in groups of three as a full play. The full cycle is titled "The Orphans' Home Cycle". These are the three trilogies and their three acts:
The Story of a Childhood (1902-1904, 1911)
Roots in a Parched Ground
Convicts
Lily Dale
The Story of a Marriage (1912-1917)
The Widow Claire
Courtship
Valentine's Day
The Story of a Family (1918-1928)
1918
Cousins
Death of Papa
The individual one-act plays each run about 75 minutes on stage. The movie runs 94 minutes. So, yeah, it's padded and it drags a bit.
I'm watching it now and not enjoying it.
When they are based on plays like this, whether successful or not on the stage, often times as not, "something gets lost in the transition" so to speak.
It's always been so obvious when many movies are based on plays. It's just endless chatter, chatter, chatter and yes, it is incredibly boring. The dialogue is not compelling in its inane attempt to 'reflect life'.