This portrait of Woody Guthrie has a lot of highlights, including Haskell Wexler's great photography).
But David Carradine is very good, not great in the lead, and the film feels a bit unfocused.
There's surprisingly little of Guthrie's music performed, and a lot of it played orchestrally as soundtrack, which seemed odd and out of character to me.
I appreciate that this is grittier, darker, and less linear than the standard Hollywood bio-pic. And I love that Guthrie is shown as a deeply flawed man, (e.g. his easy willingness to cheat on his wife). But in the end this doesn't go very deeply into his politics or his music, the two most important things about his life.
But David Carradine is very good, not great in the lead, and the film feels a bit unfocused.
There's surprisingly little of Guthrie's music performed, and a lot of it played orchestrally as soundtrack, which seemed odd and out of character to me.
I appreciate that this is grittier, darker, and less linear than the standard Hollywood bio-pic. And I love that Guthrie is shown as a deeply flawed man, (e.g. his easy willingness to cheat on his wife). But in the end this doesn't go very deeply into his politics or his music, the two most important things about his life.