Many of my film picks come from various Broken Forum posters. The choice of this particular one came from an offhand comment from a regular about how this film induces discomfort. Since this film also won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1980 and was Robert Redford’s directorial debut, I decided to include it in my list as an oddball pick from the past.

What this film excels in is depicting people speaking to each other but not connecting. They’re making noises with their mouths, especially polite noises, but each person isn’t really listening and paying attention to what the other person is saying. Many of these non-conversations go on long enough to make the viewer squirm uncomfortably in their seats. Since characters in most films tend to be pretty eloquent and blockbusters in particular are full of witty one-liners, this is a pretty novel sensation.

In other respects however this film feels rather pedestrian and, well, ordinary. All of the actors turn in respectable if unspectacular performances. The film is manages to be engaging most of them, but the resolution at the end feels just a bit too neat and Hollywood-like. I did like how Redford didn’t begin the film with exposition about what happened to this family and dived straight into the day-to-day routines of their lives, allowing past details to surface naturally as the story unfolded.

Overall this film probably isn’t worth watching to modern audiences except to gain an idea of what the film tastes of that time were like. I am piqued that such a seemingly small, unambitious film managed to win the Best Picture award in 1980 but I understand that the modern consensus today is that Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull should have won instead.