Far and Away (1992)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Ron Howard

Writers (WGA):

Bob Dolman (story) &
Ron Howard (story) ...

Release Date:

22 May 1992 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

They needed a country that was big enough for both of their dreams.

Plot:

A young man (Cruise) leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter (Kidman) after some trouble with her father...

Plot Keywords:

Oklahoma | Ireland | Boxing | Train | Male Nudity

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Tom Cruise	...	Joseph Donnelly
Nicole Kidman	...	Shannon Christie
Thomas Gibson	...	Stephen Chase
Robert Prosky	...	Daniel Christie
Barbara Babcock	...	Nora Christie
Cyril Cusack	...	Danty Duff
Eileen Pollock	...	Molly Kay
Colm Meaney	...	Kelly
Douglas Gillison	...	Dermody
Michelle Johnson	...	Grace
Wayne Grace	...	Bourke
Niall Toibin	...	Joe
Barry McGovern	...	McGuire
Gary Lee Davis	...	Gordon
Jared Harris	...	Paddy

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for some violence and sensuality.

Runtime:

140 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Dolby SR (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Canada:14+ (Ontario) | UK:12 (original rating) | UK:15 (video rating) | Argentina:Atp | Australia:M | Chile:TE | Finland:K-14 | France:U | Germany:12 | Norway:15 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG-13 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Ardmore Studios - Herbert Road, Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland

Company:

Imagine Films Entertainment

Trivia:

Three of 'Ron Howard''s great-grandparents actually rode in the Great Land Rush of 1893, as depicted in the film.

Goofs:

Continuity: At the end of the movie, when Joseph and Stephen fall off the horse, Joseph hits his head on a good sized rock. He gets up and staggers, then falls down with his head about a foot away from the rock. When the camera dollies up and looks down from an overhead shot, he is several feet from the rock.

Quotes:

Bourke: Now that's a long-legged piece of strawberry tart!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Directors: The Films of Roger Corman (#1.5)" (1999)

Soundtrack:

BOOK OF DAYS

The Frontier Thesis

Back in Gone With the Wind Gerald O'Hara tried to tell Katie Scarlett the importance of the land, a lesson she took the entire film to learn. For Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman it's the land, their own bit of land to work as they please and answer to no one.

The story of Far and Away takes place in a very specific time period in the history of both Ireland and America. In Ireland the home rule movement had been dealt a stunning blow with the fall of Charles Stuart Parnell in scandal. Independence had been set back and the landlords were riding high, though not without opposition.

Opposition in this case comes in the form of Tom Cruise and his family who are Irish tenant farmers about to be tossed off their land because they can't pay the exorbitant rents. Turns out the landlord's got a most fetching daughter in Nicole Kidman who's got her eye on the peasant lad.

Far and Away is first and foremost a romance, the rich girl and the poor boy, two beautiful young people we all wish we were. Of course the real affair of Tom and Nicole and their eventual marriage is fairy tale storybook stuff on its own. It sure didn't hurt the film.

They've got a rough road ahead though. In Boston they get exploited by their own people as badly as the English are doing in the old country. Of course their eventual salvation is the Oklahoma land rush where Tom can get his own land to work.

Frederick Jackson Turner was a famous American historian who put forth the thesis that the reason America escaped the class struggles and revolutions of Europe was our frontier. It didn't work out so well for those Indians already there, but the proletarian masses instead of becoming a mob that agitators could stir to revolution just went west and made opportunities. Turner's thesis is still a widely respected paradigm in the study of American history and I think if he could have seen Far and Away, he'd say Ron Howard proved his point.

Speaking of Ron Howard, it's pretty obvious he was influenced by both versions of the Oklahoma land rush previously made in the two films of Edna Ferber's classic Cimarron. He doesn't do badly in recreating Boston of the Gay Nineties and Ireland of the same period.

And Tom and Nicole certainly look beautiful even when she's working in a factory and Tom's getting clobbered in a bare knuckle prize fight. Look for nice performances by Robert Prosky as Nicole's father, Thomas Gibson as Tom's rival for Nicole and Colm Meaney as the Irish political boss in Boston.

Maybe the world needs a frontier to solve its problems.