Movie Reviews : ‘Rachel River’ Offers Deep Images of Survival

Our first glimpses of the remote Minnesota town called “Rachel River” (at AMC Century 14)give an inviting tug, even though it’s late fall and on the verge of a clearly harsh winter.

Here, at last, is an American community that looks untouched by the garishness of ubiquitous modern roadside culture, a town that looks the way it might have 25 or even 50 years ago. Yet by the time this film, which possesses a Shaker-like simplicity, is over, we realize that it takes as much resilience to live here as it does almost any place else. Yes, there is a kindly sense of community but also loneliness and frustration.

“Rachel River,” which Judith Guest, author of “Ordinary People,” adapted from the stories of Minnesota writer Carol Bly, brings to mind Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio,” but is not as despairing. The citizens of Rachel River, all of whom come to such full life on the screen, are hardy souls. They may suffer, but they don’t give up.

We meet them, one by one, as the news spreads of the death of the reclusive Svea, a widow who lived in a cluttered shack on the outskirts of town and is rumored to have left a small fortune. Svea will inevitably become the subject of a radio sketch by Mary Graving (Pamela Reed), a gifted writer who realizes she knows little about the dead woman. Mary is clearly talented and admired by her neighbors, but as a divorcee with two small children and an irresponsible ex-husband, she worries constantly about making ends meet.

Two very different but equally awkward men are attracted to her: James Olson’s Jack, a well-educated mortician, who has an intellectual bond with Mary but is too self-conscious and repressed to be an effective suitor, and Craig T. Nelson’s Marlyn, a hard-drinking good ol’ boy deputy sheriff, often obnoxious but confidently sexy and not nearly as stupid as the mortician insists he is. (Of Jack, Marlyn remarks shrewdly, “How could he go off to college and come back an undertaker?”)

As splendid as Olson and Nelson are--as is everyone, including Zeljko Ivanek, subtle as a wistful retarded youth--the film is dominated by Reed and by Viveca Lindfors, who offer contrasting portraits of youth and old age, of a woman coping with the middle of her life and of a woman, herself still healthy and strong, confronted with the loss of all that she has cherished. Reed and Lindfors are actresses of distinction rather than celebrity, and of different generations, yet “Rachel River” may well represent the best opportunity each has ever had on the screen. Reed’s Mary finds herself wondering whether she can continue on alone, both emotionally and financially;Lindfors’ Harriet, her features worn yet durably handsome, wonders how she will ever be able to let go emotionally, in the face of cruel circumstance, of all that has sustained her.

What distinguishes “Rachel River” from most other independent American films is not only its ensemble portrayals under the spare and rigorous direction of Sandy Smolan, a documentary film maker in his feature debut. It also boasts appropriately austere images, captured by cinematographer Paul Elliott and its exceptionally rich and evocative score, composed by the distinctive New Age composer Arvo Part. The contrast between the way “Rachel River” (rated PG-13 for language and adult themes and situations) looks and the way its sounds expresses perfectly the difference between the faces its people try to present to the world and what’s going on behind them.