A River Runs Through It

National Review, Nov 30, 1992 by John Simon

NOT HAVING read Norman Maclean's acclaimed autobiographical novella A River Runs through It, I can't say how much better it is than the movie Richard Friedenberg has written, and Robert Redford directed, from it. A lot, I hope.

The story is a reminiscence of a brother who was an inspired fly fisherman, but came, because of his gambling-den debts, to a sticky end. This doomed younger brother, Paul, and Norman are the sons of Reverend Maclean, a stern but soft-spoken Scottish Canadian Presbyterian minister, who, with his equally staunch-wife, settled in Montana, in the sort of setting usually described as God's Country. The father, a dedicated fly fisherman, brings his sons up to experience this pursuit as a way of life, a supreme art form, a mystery that runs a close second to religion. So the film tells you everything about fly fishing that you never would have dreamed of asking.

Paul, a misfit in other ways, was a fly-fishing wizard, an innovator, a creature in the state of grace by virtue of the quantity and size of the trout he caught, and by the uniquely gorgeous way he cast for them, not to mention his few but impeccably tied and chosen flies. Grace, apparently, is measured by such things. True, Paul casts with the fioritura of an Italian operatic tenor or fencing master, but still, I ask, Grace? You might as soon judge a secretary's closeness to God by how many words she can type in a minute.

Of course, the Montana landscapes, or riverscapes, and the woods and mountains beyond, are almost unbearably beautiful. As photographed by that luminous cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, every outdoor frame is too yummy to behold: this film should be licked, not just seen. It would taste, I dare say, of mint, wild thyme, and aromatic ferns (if there is such a thing). The actors look archetypally American (even those who are British), and belong less in a movie than in a Norman Rockwell calendar. Robert Redford serves as his own narrator, and his voice is a balm to the ear glutted with urban noise.

The writing strikes me as no different from that in any commercial movie that makes the mistake of striving for art. Friedenberg, apparently, spells out a great many things that Maclean left deliberately vague or blank, a kind of elaboration that seldom pays off. The fruitiest verbiage (Maclean's own) is reserved for the countless fly-fishing episodes, and it left me bemused, like a detailed account of the joys of sex from the lover of a woman I consider repellent. The rest of the movie is standard stuff, and whoever cherishes homespun sentimentality will find it here in inexhaustible supply.

Brad Pitt, his hair dyed blond, makes Paul a heady charmer indeed, doubtless not coincidentally looking just like a young Robert Redford; there may even be some real acting buried under all that charm. Contrariwise, Craig Sheffer, as Norman, strikes me as a bore, well beyond the demands of the role. With a beetle brow overhanging tiny, deep-set eyes whose gaze may be the posthumous light from a distant dead star, he is neither handsome nor talented, only foursquare. Tom Skerritt is correct enough as the man of God and fish. The British actress Emily Lloyd (best remembered as the sexy teenager in Wish You Were Here) has grown into a remarkably plain young woman with a trapezoidal face, but she plays Norman's love interest perfectly adequately. Another Britisher, Brenda Blethyn, does decently by the boys' mother, an infelicitous role that offers scant chance to act, and none to fish.

The minor parts are well taken, notably by Nichole Burdette as Paul's half-Cherokee girlfriend, and Susan Traylot as the town's often sozzled whore. Perhaps I should give you the last voiceover words, taken straight from the novella: "Eventually, all things merge inte one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. [A bargain basement by the sound of it.] On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. [So that's why they sound like something that crawled out from under a rock.] I am haunted by waters. [No comment.]" We have, by the way, been informed that none of the movie's specially bred trout came to any harm. No matter, since everything else about the film is good enough to eat.