Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see that version but the novel is a very concise story, it's not an epic narrative. I've just re-read it and it only took me a week and I'm a slow reader. It's hardly Lonesome Dove! Whatever next: "Silk: running time 180mins"?
shareThornton is a Hollywood maverick, so maybe doing a 4 hour cut was his way of "stickin' it to the man". But no studio is going to release a four hour film. ATPH is the first novel in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. It's possible Thornton thought that the complete works deserved an "epic film" approach. But it's all so useless because editing out 2 hours will kill your movie. Thornton had to know this would happen.
shareWhy would it be less? The pace of the book suggests that this would not be an unreasonable running time. I would invisage the first hundred or so pages taking over an hour as the relationship between Rawlings and Cole is explored. This is possibly my favourite book and I am dying to see the film but I cannot see how one with a running time of less than three hours can do it justice.
shareI've seen the movie many times, including my first viewing at the theatre. I can unabashedly say I love it. I've read the book and listened to it on an excellent recorded version. Both experiences were great. Would I like to see the director's original vision? Heck yes! But the film as it stands is a darn good film. It does, however, seem to inspire vastly different responses. I initially saw it with my father-in-law. He hated it. I loved it. We've agreed to disagree. We still speak...we just don't speak much of this film.
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Haven't read the book, but I could see plenty of room for background history on the characters.
Blevins, Cole and Lacey each had very specific ideas about the way the world is, but these are told (with reasonable subtley) and not shown.
Same for Alejandra. What had she experienced in her life which made risk her honor for Cole? What (specifically) was the source of the deep contempt for her aunt? She called herself a whore, but was she? Or only within the context of her strict upbringing? Without history it is unclear.
The love story between Cole and Anlejandra was also glossed over. They met, they flirted, they bounced and thrashed - poof! - eternal love. If it was better developed, it would have been more believable and at the end more heart-breaking.
The 4 hour version is likely excellent. But if the film had to be cut, it may have been better to eliminate entire sub-plots than to take a little bit away from each.
This movie was on Sunday morning which is when they play movies that no one watches. It was long at two hours. I can't imagine this at four hours.
This is just a road movie. Cut out the love scenes, and you can have the same movie. Just have them get arrested for anything else. Cut out the arrest and the prision, and you have the same love story. Auntie would still ban Damon from seeing Cruz.
It's just a series of slightly related events -- told very very slow.
to be honest, I just watched the movie and i'm about 2/3 of the way through the book (first time I've watched the movie WHILE reading the book. interesting experience. i recommend it). Anyway, I really liked the film, and the only thing I thought after watching it was that the pace seemed so much slower in the book. sure enough, when i looked up some details, i see that the original cut was three and a half hours long. this is definitely a decent movie as-is, but I would love to see the original cut. I think it could be excellent.
there's no place you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/2491
What Damon had to say about it. They start to talk about it at 21:23
It’s just so sad that the variety of the world should be used as a contentious issue.
The novel spent like 200 pages describing how the boys ate beans and herded cattle. By far the worst cut they made was in the prison. They were supposed to be forced to fight back-to-back everyday, all the time, the atmosphere was extremely bleak and gripping - and the movie had none of that. Like one fight and they're out, done.
Honestly the studio deserves credit for keeping in all the content, since the script follows the source material very closely, but they completely failed to capture the magic of the book.
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Most reliable sources say "Thornton felt that the film would be best at a length of 2 hrs, 45 mins." Don't know where that 4 hour stuff got started.
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