The movie: “A River Runs Through It”
Stars: Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer, Tom Skerritt
Rated: PG
Released: 1992
What I “know”: I get this one and “Legends of the Fall” confused, because I’ve never seen either. This one has to do with flyfishing, based on the image search. I THINK it’s old-timey but maybe they just live in the middle of nowhere where real clothes haven’t reached yet. Side note: I’ve had a thing for Tom Skerritt since “Space Camp” so there’s that.
What I know after reading the Netflix sleeve: Two fly-fishing brothers, straitlaced scholar Norman (Sheffer) and trouble-finding gambler Paul (Pitt), struggle to mollify their Presbyterian preacher father’s (Skerritt) lofty moral — and fishing — standards. Director Robert Redford’s Oscar-winning, nostalgic meditation about the fierce bonds that unite and divide families is set in Montana in the early 1900s. Emily Lloyd, Stephen Shellen and Brenda Blethyn co-star.
I was right about the fly-fishing AND the old-timey! Also, I promise my whole list isn’t related to Redford. Yet. Is Brad Pitt always the ne’er-do-well? I think so. I do love me some family strife, though, so here we go.
01:28: This movie is going to be gorgeous, isn’t it? I love a good, gorgeous movie.
01:33: Missoula, Montana? I have enough friends who either live there or have lived there to KNOW this is going to be a gorgeous movie.
02:10: I’ve never seen Edie McClurg in a serious role. You all can keep her as Grace in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” She’ll always be the bratty girl’s mom on “Small Wonder” to me. Harriet was the WORST.
03:33: Holy cow, that’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
04:34: I love you, Tom Skeritt, but sometimes water is just water and not “the words of God.”
05:55: “If he had his way, nobody who did not know how to catch a fish would be able to disgrace a fish by catching it.” Well, that’s just a mess of a sentence right there. But I like the thought behind it.
07:28: The Young Pitt looks so much like Opie Taylor it’s kind of freaking me out.
07:54: Yeah, this movie is gorgeous.
09:55: Young Pitt doing his little hip-waggle for the prostitutes just cracked my shit up.
11:18: I really hope there’s a softening of Skerritt somewhere in this movie. I am not a big fan of the totalitarian fathers.
15:32: Brad Pitt jumps off the roof into a roll; Craig Sheffer walks over and shimmies down a corner of the house. Talk about beating you over the head with their differences.
17:44: I swear, if they get in this boat and try to “shoot the chutes,” I hope they all die. Because if the two brothers live and their friends die, I will wish them ill will the rest of this movie. Trust. And since I know the brothers survive, I can only hope they don’t get in the stupid boat.
18:52: Dammit, they got in the boat. But it’s just the two of them. So now I hope they either bail on it, or they suffer horrifically painful injuries that don’t impact their future quality of life.
19:54: Of course, they hit the first big rock they see. This is a terrible idea, boys.
22:15: That isn’t much time for them to have crashed the boat, ended up on the shore, climbed a much higher elevation, hidden and then jumped on one of the dudes. Also, Norman is REALLY rethinking this “I’ve got my brother’s back” thing he’s got going on … as he should be. Stupid is as stupid does, folks.
23:09: Old Minister Skerritt says, “Boys, what have you done?” I’m guessing there’s a lot more that they’ve done that you don’t know about and shouldn’t know about. Also, this is the very embodiment of disappointment:
24:31: I very much do not like Brad Pitt. Not in this movie, and not in any movie. He just rubs me the wrong way every time I see him. That whole thing right there will cocking up his brother’s sandwich just because it’s “funny” is making me irrationally angry. I hope Norman kicks his ass for every time some asshole thinks he’s funnier than he is just because he’s stupid.
24:40: And now his mom’s on the ground. BRAD PITT IS THE WORST.
25:27: “That was the only time we ever fought.” Damn shame about it, too.
25:33: “If boyhood questions aren’t answered before a certain point, they can’t be raised again.” That’s some BS. A LOT of people are still fighting childhood fights. Come on, Macleans. Put on the gloves!
27:32: Tom Skerritt wins the “fish” measuring contest, as I assumed. And then was super cocky about it. That I love.
30:28: My two favorite quick shots of the movie so far: Norman’s face as he sees those mountains again, and Old Minister Skerritt starting to wave, then catching himself and instead grasping his hands together so as not to show any emotion.
45:01: Poor Norman. That’s what you get when you try to big-time people from your old area. You stick your foot in your mouth. Don’t brag about the “colored” jazz you heard in NYC, son. Montana ain’t got no time for that. And you get looks like this (fortuitous pausing):
45:10: Wait, that’s all it takes? The guy who just big-timed you, and insulted your mother’s favorite group, takes your drink back, takes four steps back, then re-offers you the drink and asks you to dance? Man, you ARE easy, Jessie Burns.
47:50: So he calls her later, she has NO idea who she is among the 4000 men she flirted with that night, and he follows up with “You’re so je nais se quoi?” “You’re so that something special?” What the HELL, Norman? You are terrible at this. And yet, it inexplicably keeps working.
49:45: House rules include “No Injuns?” Considering your “house” is an illegal speakeasy, maybe don’t be such a stickler for rules when someone who loves to mess stuff up as much as Pitt walks in.
53:12: Jessie’s totally going to bang Paul, isn’t she? Gross.
56:04: Dammmmmn Norman got game when he writes it out. Speaking, he’s not so great at. I guess that book learnin’ off East paid off!
1:03:40: “They were Methodists, a denomination my father always referred to as ‘Baptists who could read.'” Man, fights between religious types is always funny to me. Oooh the aforementioned Edie McClurg is Jessie’s mom!
1:06:48: Annnnnnd Neal is the villain. Famdamily, a weird look in the mirror to fix his hair, then he HITS THE DOG. You and me, pal, we ain’t friends.
1:07:03: Old Minister Skerritt can look down on Methodists all he wants, but their family gatherings are a lot more fun.
1:10:16: Talking about the ridden hard, put up wet former beauty queen at the bar shack, “There must have been a hardship in her new profession” is the nicest possible way to say “ridden hard, put up wet.”
1:10:35: OK, now i’m having flashbacks. I feel like someone once posted this one part of this scene (the part about otters) in response to something I’d written about otters. No idea who did it, but this feels oddly familiar. Weird.
1:18:29: What a piece of shit Neal is.
1:20:00: And what a piece of shit Jessie is too. Stupid Methodists. (Full disclosure: My grandmother was a Methodist and any time I went to church it was a Methodist church. So that line is a joke)
1:26:02: OK, I’ll say it: I don’t get fly-fishing humor, but Old Minister Skerritt sure does!
1:27:00: I REALLY like Brenda Blethyn as the mom in this. She’s just so expressive and wonderful.
1:27:26: “I understand he’s changed the spelling of our name. MacLean, with a capital L. Now everyone will think we’re lowland Scots.” I don’t know why but that made me giggle out loud.
1:30:06: OK it doesn’t make up for the dog-hitting or the tramp-sleeping, but Neal trying to do right by Norman on his way out of town was nice. Kind of an “He’s OK” to the rest of the family. Good for that.
1:36:48: Norman looks a lot like Steve Rannazzisi from certain angles. If you don’t know him by name, you’d probably know his face. From “The League” and also from LYING ABOUT BEING IN THE TWIN TOWERS ON 9/11.
1:47:43: Well this is the saddest AND most self-aware clip in the whole movie.
1:53:02: No. Nope. This isn’t happening. Why is he walking into the house alone? No.
1:53:15: Dammit. Young and stupid is no way to go through life. Dammit, Paul, you pissed off the wrong people. Gambling is bad. Yeesh. This is a gutpunch. “Nearly all the bones in his hand were broken.” At least he went down fighting? I don’t even know any more. Get out, Norman. Don’t let this stop you.
1:56:10: What cute babies he and Jessie made.
1:56:53: “We can love completely, without complete understanding.” Well, that’s just beautiful.
This movie hit me much harder than I expected, even halfway through. I’m more emotional today because my mom left after a four-day visit, and I’m always more emotional when I say goodbye to one or both of them, whether I leave them or they leave me. My mom’s 66 and she’s getting older. She’s not old, by any stretch … we did a lot of walking on this trip and she more than kept up. But she’s a little slower going down steps and she’s a little slower to get up from sitting. And anything that makes me think of losing her destroys me. So I’m sitting here on my couch, tears rolling down both cheeks, and thinking about family and life and love. I don’t know exactly when I got pulled into this movie … it snuck up on me. At some point, I went from thinking “look at all these terrible decisions” to “everyone makes the wrong choice sometimes” without even realizing it until it was too late and I was in it. This is the most affected I’ve been, of my five movies so far. I’m glad the next one is sci-fi so I can stop feeling for a while.
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