Word: milagros
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...never emerges from behind the camera, but every frame tells you who directed The Milagro Beanfield War. This movie even looks like Robert Redford: it's smart and handsome, with a crinkly smile around the edges. It boasts wistful vistas and umber landscapes. Clouds stampede over the northern New Mexico terrain, where hillocks perch like adobe huts. The kiss of two fine brown faces is silhouetted by an orange sunset, flaring into sympathetic melodrama. Night falls, and there's a rope of rainbow in the sky; a frosted moon smiles behind a scrim of mist. It makes for quite...
...passionate humanism is laced with wry. For Redford is not only Hollywood's last hero. He is a benevolent movie mogul, using his Sundance Institute to finance noble independent films in the pastoral mode. Alas, most of these films have been lame and prissy. Perhaps one reason Redford made Milagro was to show the young directors at Sundance that a well-meaning film can also be a good movie...
Working from John Nichols' 1974 novel, he has fashioned the imaginary town of Milagro (Spanish for miracle) into a Disneyland with dirt. See the picturesque shacks, the decent people with their ready aphorisms, the general store that sells everything from bullets to Paul Newman's salad dressing. On this sere turf, Hispanics have lived and farmed, have scratched out survival for centuries. And they don't need the white folks' help, muchas gracias. As the town's mayor tells a visiting sociologist (Daniel Stern), "If we don't know it already, chances are we aren't interested in learning...
...remark applies both to the Milagrans and to the rich Anglos nearby who have plans to turn the area into a resort, complete with ski lodge, golf course, condominiums and a man-made lake. The developers are not interested in the resort's effect on Milagro's ecology and psychology. They are interested in Joe Mondragon (Chick Vennera) though. On a caprice, Joe has irrigated his parched beanfield with water destined for the resort, and now the land barons are flexed to strike back...
...Harvard Law School graduate has also acted in several films including "Fatal Beauty", "Critical Condition" and "Crossover Dreams." He will appear in a film directed by Robert Redford, "The Milagro Beanfield War," which is scheduled for release later this year...