Norma Rae
(1979)
(SPOILERS) What a dreary cartload of issue-led
laboriousness. Worthy subjects may make for worthy movies (or they may not),
but there’s absolutely no guarantee they’ll make interesting ones. And when you
attach Martin Ritt to them (post-‘60s, at any rate), you’re almost guaranteed a
comatose result. Norma Rae is one of
those pictures that would be entirely, rather than just mostly, forgotten, if
it wasn’t for it bagging Sally Field an Oscar for playing the title character.
And it isn’t even that “You really like
me!” Oscar either.
If you want to make starchy political
subject matter riveting, give Warren Beatty a call. This, though, telling of the unionisation of
a cotton mill in a North Carolina town, has earnestness up the wazoo, and feels
slightly patronising to boot, as Norma charts an Eliza Doolittle course of
becoming socio-politically aware while weighed down with a good, simple southern
girl accent that would set her in fine stead for playing Forrest Gump’s mom a
decade and a half later.
Everything surrounding Norma’s rise reeks
of stolid cliché, from the uncompromising organiser (Ron Leibman) to the kindly-but-straightforward
beau (Beau Bridges). It’s easy to rag on about simplistic Hollywood formulas,
but for all the drama this elicits it could almost have done with an infusion
of that Jerry Bruckheimer spirit (since the standard response to those suggesting
this kind of picture is a wee bit lacking is to go and watch a Michael Bay
movie, on the shortly to be deceased imdb
comments boards at least), or a touch of Taylor Hackford in An Officer and a Gentleman mode.
Anything to snap it out of its somnambulant self-importance.
Very occasionally, Norma Rae threatens to become interesting (it seems to be inching
towards suggesting over-protective dad Pat Hingle is over- other things too, but then decides to forget about it). Field would
go on to make two more movies with Ritt no one remembers, and we’re now at a
point where no one quite remembers why they really liked her either. Just being
based on a true story (of Crystal Lee Sutton) doesn’t automatically warrant
respect, and as far as tales of undaunted activism in the face of oppressive
bosses and hazardous working conditions go, Silkwood
a few years later is vastly superior, right down to Meryl dousing herself in
blue collar intonations.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.