Singer/Actress Barbra Streisand made her directorial debut in 1983 with the musical drama Yentl, a movie about a woman disguising herself as a man in order to enter into religious training. The film was a modest hit but failed to launch her into a successful directorial career. She wouldn’t helm another feature film until eight years later when she tackled the challenging, dark themes of Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides, a book about childhood trauma, repressed memories, suicide, and a bit of romance thrown in, too. In translating this book to the screen, Pat Conroy paired up with Becky Johnston and distilled down the complex plot into something that could play on the silver screen. In doing so much of the story’s richly detailed flashback sequences were watered down or outright eliminated and more focus was added to the developing relationship between the two leads. Fans of the novel were displeased by these changes and have been vocal about it over the years. A limited run series is currently being developed that ideally will address these things and better represent the novel as written. Whether it will be an improvement overall only time will tell.
The story follows Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte), a teacher and football coach who lives with his wife and three daughters in South Carolina. He’s close to the young girls but has grown distant with his wife which has led her into an affair with another man who now wants to marry her. His mother Lila (Kate Nelligan) comes to visit one day to tell him that his twin sister, Savannah (Melinda Dillon) is in a coma in New York City after a failed suicide attempt. Tom travels alone to New York to be with her, to help Savannah’s psychiatrist and to escape for a time a life that no longer satisfies him.
During his initial meetings with the psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein (Barbra Streisand), he is cagy about revealing anything about the past, using humor and deflection to avoid difficult subjects. Like his sister, there are subjects he refuses to confront, even to himself. As his marriage at home appears to be coming to an end, so too does his relationship grow with Susan. She, too, is dealing with a cheating spouse as well as raising an angry teenager struggling to find himself amidst an overbearing father who insists on guiding his life a specific direction. Tom will eventually have to face his childhood trauma to help himself, as well as his sister, who needs him now more than ever as she begins to recover physically in the hospital.
It is never a pleasant subject watching abuse, especially in the family where everyone should feel safe and secure. Watching a father brow beat and bully his wife and kids will always sicken me when watching it. We see this happening on several occasions. We never see him outright beating on them, though. It comes as a complete surprise that the repressed memories aren’t about him at all, though. When Tom is finally able to voice what happened to them as kids that causes his sister to be suicidal it amounts to a random act of violence from a group of complete strangers. The total randomness of this undermines the emotional impact of the moment some. It’s still awful and Nick Nolte is selling the hell out of it but with all the build-up over the abusive father it’s also confusing to have the big reveal be so random and unrelated. This is a case of the movie leaving out too much from the page.
By shifting the focus too far away from the troubled childhood and too much onto the relationship between Tom and Susan it bleeds much of the emotional impact of the story away. For instance, Tom and Savannah’s older brother, Lucas, is barely mentioned outside of the flashbacks other than to say that he had died. His story was a large part of the novel and leaving it out is a mistake. His story was vitally important to the overall narrative, yet he’s so poorly represented in the film they might as well have just cut his character altogether.
What did make the cut, however, is done well. Nick Nolte does an amazing job navigating the many facets of a complicated character. He uses humor and laughter whenever he’s trying to hide any real emotions, something that Dr. Lowenstein sees through immediately. It’s not easy depicting these kind of emotions without hitting a false note but Nick accomplished it. The only weak point in his acting is his inconsistent southern accent. This would be his first of three Academy Award nominations but as of yet he hasn’t taken one home.
Barbra Streisand wasn’t nominated for her acting of her directing here. Her sole nomination comes from being one of the film’s producers. During the Academy Awards ceremony Billy Crystal, the host for the evening, joked that The Prince of Tides directed itself. Her directing is perfectly fine here. Nothing about it really stands out and perhaps that is why it failed to get noticed by the Academy. As for her acting, like the directing it has a workmanlike feel to it that often calls attention to the craft behind it rather than being natural and convincing. Barbra Streisand can do a great job in front of the camera but only when she is playing to her strengths. That is not the case here. She’s not giving an awful performance but there is nothing special about it, either.
The Prince of Tides is a good solid movie that really needed to be a great one. Unfortunately the nature of films doesn’t lend enough time for the complexities of this plot to be played out satisfactorily. There is some powerful stuff here but it’s undermined by a script that sacrifices too much to get it to the screen. By remaking this film as a series that should provide a large enough canvas to do this story justice and redeem the novel. Survivors of sexual abuse may find moments of this film too hard to watch but others will just struggle finding much of a reason to engage in these characters beyond the charisma of the actors themselves. That goes far but not far enough to make this one really worth the investment.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Barbra Streisand and Andrew S. Karsch
Best Actor: Nick Nolte
Best Supporting Actress: Kate Nelligan
Best Screenplay - Based on Material Previously Produced or Published: Pat Conroy and Becky Johnston
Best Art Direction: Paul Sylbert and Caryl Heller
Best Cinematography: Stephen Goldblatt
Best Original Score: James Newton Howard
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Release Date: December 25, 1991
Running Time: 132 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Barbra Streisand, Nick Nolte, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, Jeroen Krabbé, Melinda Dillin, George Carlin and Jason Gould
Directed By: Barbra Streisand
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