A Thousand Acres

“King Lear” set on a farm in Iowa.

• Director:Jocelyn Moorhouse
• Genre:Drama
• Runtime:101 minutes

Cast

Michelle Pfeiffer: Rose Cook Lewis
Jessica Lange : Ginny Cook Smith
Jason Robards : Larry Cook
Jennifer Jason Leigh : Caroline Cook
Colin Firth : Jess Clark

Larry Cook (Jason Robards), a powerful Iowa farmer, decides to retire and split his acres of land among his three daughters, Ginny (Jessica Lange), Rose (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Caroline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). The two eldest, Ginny and Rose, happily accept the lucrative agreement to live and work on the farm, but the youngest, Caroline, abandons farming for a law career in Des Moines and refuses to take part in the deal. Initially, Larry is consumed with rage and rejects Caroline, leaving Rose and Ginny to go about running the farm with their husbands. However, as Larry loses touch with farming life, he begins to lose touch with reality, and his painful descent into madness leaves him bitterly opposed to his daughters’ ways of running the farm. Paranoid and disillusioned, he decides to sue Rose and Ginny in an effort to regain his patriarchal control, and seeks Caroline’s help. The lawsuit divides the family forever, leaving Rose and Ginny to suffer alone while realizing painful memories from their childhood. As Rose and Ginny discover their own individual strengths in the face of adversity, they learn how to survive on their own, without the protection of the farm and the suffocating presence of their father. Read more

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