LA TERRE is a film about peasant farmers in France and how they all basically suck. One of the main characters is an old man who is getting too old to farm, so he divides the land up among family members who agree in writing to provide him a retirement income and home. Soon afterwords, however, the family let him starve and his wife dies heart broken. Eventually, he's forced off the land and he can't wait to die by the end of the film. Oddly, however, with the contract guaranteeing him income, the old idiot not once seeks redress through the court! The other main character in a mostly parallel story is a new guy to town. He falls for a young lady whose guardians are evil scum and do everything they can do to keep her unmarried and staying at home, as they don't want to give up what is rightfully hers. In the end, they kill her and her new husband is forced to give back the land to the evil guardians.
Before I began my review, I read through a review on IMDb that gave this film 1 star. Well, I can understand why the person didn't like the film, but this reviewer ignores the technical aspects of the film. For a silent, it's actually well made. If you compare it to other films from 1921, the characters seem to act more normally--with none of the crazy over-emoting done on many films up until that time. The cinematography was also quite good and the film was well made all around. However, when it comes to the story, this review hit it on the head. The characters aren't likable at all--not one. The sad ones (such as the old man who is thrown off his land) aren't particularly complex or engaging. The truly evil ones (and this includes most of the peasants in the film) are so despicable and awful that you could see this film being a propaganda film intended to justify the killing of all the peasants!! Almost no one in the film has any redeeming values and as such the film seems more like a bunch of caricatures instead of real people. As a result, the audience has little empathy for anyone and simply wants the film to end.
Overall, a thoroughly unpleasant film that just didn't engage me--though I tried. If you haven't noticed, the plot is in many ways a reworking of "King Lear".
Before I began my review, I read through a review on IMDb that gave this film 1 star. Well, I can understand why the person didn't like the film, but this reviewer ignores the technical aspects of the film. For a silent, it's actually well made. If you compare it to other films from 1921, the characters seem to act more normally--with none of the crazy over-emoting done on many films up until that time. The cinematography was also quite good and the film was well made all around. However, when it comes to the story, this review hit it on the head. The characters aren't likable at all--not one. The sad ones (such as the old man who is thrown off his land) aren't particularly complex or engaging. The truly evil ones (and this includes most of the peasants in the film) are so despicable and awful that you could see this film being a propaganda film intended to justify the killing of all the peasants!! Almost no one in the film has any redeeming values and as such the film seems more like a bunch of caricatures instead of real people. As a result, the audience has little empathy for anyone and simply wants the film to end.
Overall, a thoroughly unpleasant film that just didn't engage me--though I tried. If you haven't noticed, the plot is in many ways a reworking of "King Lear".