bcs4
I'm not sure how this movie could have been better acted, directed or written, and the soundtrack was excellent. Where has this thing been? The reality of the characters, their motivations.. they were absolutely spot on. There seemed to be a great chemistry between everyone involved, It would be hard to believe they didn't all feel something very special as it was being filmed. I instinctively want to pick out specific actor's performances, but it would be unfair to the rest of the cast because they were all so very strong and real. Very understated, I hope you're as surprised as I was. It's one of those films you could just slip into. If anyone involved ever reads this, thanks.
Cyrus
***May Contain Spoilers***I'm still not sure if I liked this movie or not, but I definitely found its form interesting. I kept wondering throughout just where the heck this movie was going. It seemed to go off on various tangents, building mini-dramas, only to drop them at the last minute, leaving the viewer just hanging. At first it seemed to be building a story around little Billie's adoption then it backed away. Then it insinuated a drama based around Channe's encounter with the neighbor boy and then dropped it. It continued this pattern through Candida's relationship, Channe's early promiscuity, and Marcella's growing drinking problem. All leading up to Bill's death...which is treated in the same anti-dramatic style. It seems to me that the whole point of the movie was to experiment using an anti-dramatic form and style where very dramatic episodes are abandoned just before the viewer enters the realm of real feeling.
grybop
I guess it's a hard task to make a film based on a novel, let alone an autobiography; not only should the director remain faithful to the spirit of the book, but also events must be presented from the writer's point of view. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries has partly failed from that aspect. Moreover, most of the characters are not fully developed, while events are scattered within the movie, occurring with almost no linkage between them. That's probably due to the director's attempt to fit all the details of the book in a 2 hour film and thus I think that filming a mini series would have been more appropriate...Be that as it may, I loved this movie for these reasons:1. EXCELLENT photography and good representation of the 60s and 70s.2. Superb acting by the whole cast3. It's quick-paced, sentimental and even funny whenever appropriate, just at the right time. 4. Deals with issues one can easily relate to.If you get a chance to see A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, don't miss it!8
moonlightreflections
"A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries" is a film which revolves around the proverbial institution known as family, but particularly, the relationship between a daughter and her father.The film is divided into three separate sections: "Billy," which discusses the arrival of an adopted son into the family, "Francis," which revolves around the female protagonist, Channe's, best friend, and "Daddy."In each of these categories, we are primarily subjected to the experiences of Channe, who is portrayed by the nubile, charismatic Leelee Sobieski. In them, we learn a little about her character, though strangely enough, not as much as we do about her father, whose unconditional positive regard for his daughter does much more than delineate the characteristics of the relationships among the members of the family.The acting from the entire cast is superb, and from the actors' and actresses' demeanor emanates a very credible atmosphere. Yet the one element that truly grasped my attention was the editing, which with the exception of a couple of segments, added an extremely high element of poignancy to the story. James Ivory was obviously extremely assiduous with the film in this respect, and the final result consists of a strong narrative which appears somewhat terse, but knows exactly what quantity of what the viewer should be fed.Cynical commentary has argued that this film is nothing short of tripe because it lacks a resolute motive--it consists of no conflict at all. All it is is disjointed scenes which serve no relevance to one another, and fail to tell a coherent story. The former statement in regards to the lack of conflict holds true, but the latter is what might be deemed questionable. Afterall, this is a story about the life of a family--and in a real family, few events from the past bear relevance to those of the present. "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries" simply seeks to discuss the development of relationships in a family; events of high caliber are discussed thoroughly, while those of less importance portray to be all that they could ever be: memories.
AD
