Word: stamper
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Anderson would recognize the Stamper family of Sometimes a Great Notion. "Never give a inch" is the clan motto. Their dogged nonconformity takes heed neither of political fashion nor social form. When a general strike is called among the lumbermen of their small Oregon town, the Stampers go right on working. The union pays a visit, and the head of the clan (Henry Fonda) makes congenially threatening remarks about "Commie pinkos who tell us when to cut." Replies the bookish union leader: "That's as good a statement of 19th century philosophy as I've ever heard...
...Stampers' devotion to their own simple truth is grotesque, there is a kind of perverse glory in it too. The strike is only a challenge and a test. When the union begins to exact reprisals, the younger Stamper men (Paul Newman, Michael Sarrazin, Richard Jaeckel) reply in kind. Theirs is almost a ritual defense against the onslaughts of contemporary society. Ultimately Sometimes a Great Notion is not so much concerned with politics as with freedom and the human value of outright defiance...
...screenplay is derived will miss Kesey's vigor and his bigger-than-life characterizations. The book roared, the film sputters. But the actors do it more than justice. Sarrazin, whose past performances have been consistent only in their boredom, is at ease and quite effective as a maverick Stamper home from the big city. Jaeckel is perfect as an inveterate joker who takes only his fundamentalist religion seriously, and Newman is better than he has been in years as the favorite son who idolizes his father. Fonda, as the old man, simply beats everyone cold. He has a death...
...some of them do. Half Brother Lee, the book's lago, lacks the flawed strength required for the role. He is just not very interesting, and when it is revealed that he hates Stamper because he once slept with Lee's mother, the reader does not care enough to believe or disbelieve the gimmick...
...view is there. And the best of it is the dim understanding that comes to Lee and the townspeople: they can't stand for Stamper to win, but they feel cheated and confused when he begins to lose. But Kesey understands that intolerable as a good man may be to men and gods, his defeat is even more so. Perhaps in that paradox is the twisted tragedy...