I received and watched my copy of The Roots Of Heaven on Blu Ray and enjoyed it. They did a pretty good job on the transfer and its nice to see Flynn in widescreen. However if you put his scenes back to back I am not sure it would be 15 minutes long. It should have been much more especially the scene where he talks about his problems during WWII and what happened to his men in that they stayed silent but he talked to save himself. It goes by so quickly you may miss the point if you didn’t already know about it from reading reviews like I have. It explains why he is such a mess and I wonder if it was like that because of Flynn’s condition of not being able to memorize he lines better? What a bummer. I know they had trouble from the heat but you would never know it from watching the film. They never once mention it and they don’t show anyone drinking water like they are suffering at all. They are not sweating that bad either unless they had 100 wardrobe changes during the takes. Juliette Greco is very sexy I must say. My favorite scenes with him are when they start getting down to business towards the end of the film when he acts more normal and not a drunken fool talking about his jumping bean. I wonder if they will put Istanbul on Blu Ray? That is another Cinemascope film.
— twinarchers
The Real Person!
June 1, 2014 at 4:53 pm
One of my favorite films. You must admire Flynn’s hey day films but as he aged he brought somthing visceral to his performances. As in another review, you can’t be drunk to sucessfully portray a drunk in take after take. It requires a deep understanding of that cindition, and then to put forward the meaning of the dialogue. It was great work, and his peers knew it.
The Real Person!
June 1, 2014 at 7:52 pm
No you cant be drunk and perform. They talked about that in another film One Eyed Jacks that Brando tried that and it didn’t work.
Robert
June 1, 2014 at 6:05 pm
And how about that Beverly Aadland!
The Real Person!
June 1, 2014 at 7:50 pm
I forgot to mention Beverly as I thought she looked great. She looks like she had that screen presence even though it was brief