RYAN'S DAUGHTER has all the trappings of Lean's usual epics but it's all at the service of a much smaller story than usual. We've got the Maurice Jarre score, the 70mm Freddie Young cinematography, an overture, an intermission, a long running time. But this time Robert Bolt's screenplay isn't about big ideas or crucial moments in history.
Sarah Miles stars as the daughter of a pub owner (Leo McKern) in a small coastal village in Ireland, circa the middle of WWI. Miles is bored of her small town life and wants some excitement, thinking she's found it in the local schoolteacher (Robert Mitchum) who she decides she's in love with. Mitchum attempts to talk her out of it, citing his middle age and quiet life as reasons Miles' problems wouldn't be solved by hooking up with him. But Miles won't take no for an answer, and she's young and pretty, so they're soon married.
Meanwhile, McKern doesn't just own the local pub: he also supports Irish freedom fighters while serving as an informant to the British forces currently based in their town. The town itself is anti-British and the villagers openly mock the soldiers on their patrols, including a new Major (Christopher Jones) who shows up with a false leg, a limp and a nasty case of PTSD thanks to seeing action firsthand in the trenches.
The village mob includes a nosy, but still wise, priest (Trevor Howard) and a deformed, mentally challenged mute (John Mills) who has a crush on Miles and, is the butt of cruel jokes from the other villagers, and spends most of his time being in the perfect places to observe secret trysts.
What secret trysts, you ask? Well, turns out Mitchum's right. Miles remains bored even with her new husband and after helping Jones through a bout of shell shock, forms a connection with him and enters into an affair. Not only is an affair cause for gossip itself, but the idea that a girl of this village would sleep with a British invader is unthinkable to the mob. So, we realize things might not turn out great.
Ugh. I've spent so much time talking about the plot, and there really isn't that much of it to be discussed. Most of the running time is made up of beautiful shots of beautiful scenery, and the characters end up being minor specks dwarfed by the epic-ness of it all. Unfortunately, I don't think that is the point of the story -- it is just a straight up love story, and it is not about the meaninglessness of man's selfish pursuits when compared to the rest of the world. Although maybe it should have been.
There are many great scenes though and one stunning sequence in which the villagers attempt to retrieve a shipment of weapons during a huge storm at sea. I have no idea how they shot this sequence, because it looks like a real storm, and real actors running head on into huge waves and gusts of wind among craggy rocks. It's a wonder no one was killed! Maybe it's the magic of cinema and the whole thing was safe, but this sequence looks astoundingly real.
The movie's from 1970, which you forget during its running time, because it plays out like a much older film. That's not to say the technical specs aren't top notch. They are. But the way the music highlights dramatic moments, and the way the villagers form a mob, and the way that mob informs the morality of the story that the characters have to reckon with, the way the village idiot is so broadly performed, makes it seem like old Hollywood instead of something contemporary with the changing world of more challenging and gritty films that were hitting theaters in the late 60s and throughout the 70s.
In the end I think RYAN'S DAUGHTER is worth a watch, if only for the cinematography and scenery. Of course if you've never seen Lean's other films, there are several you should put before this one, including DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, which has also been (unfairly) accused of being an overblown soap opera, but marries the epic with the intimate in a much more successful way.
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