My Antonia

• Director: Joseph Sargent
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Drama
• Movie Type: Rural Drama, Family Drama
• Themes: Immigrant Life
• Release Year: 1995

Plot

Made for the USA Network, this first film adaptation of Willa Cather's classic novel is a coming-of-age story of set in 1880s Nebraska. Orphaned after his parents die in a smallpox epidemic in Virginia, the teenaged Jimmy Burden (Neil Patrick Harris) moves to the farm of his grandparents (Jason Robards, Eva Marie Saint) outside Black Hawk, Nebraska. Their neighbors, newly arrived from Bohemia, are the Shimerda family, and Jimmy instantly becomes friends with the family's 15-year-old daughter, Antonia (Elina Lowensohn). He's pulled in two directions; her father wants him to teach her English, but his grandfather is wary of her distracting Jimmy from his own studies. After tragedy strikes the Shimerda family, Jimmy moves to town with his aging grandparents, who want to nurture his potential for becoming a university student and taking on a career. Antonia does come to work in town, thanks to the help of Jimmy's grandmother, but it's made clear to the young woman that she is not to distract Jimmy from his studies. Although Jimmy does go off to the state university in Lincoln and eventually Harvard Law School, he and Antonia maintain their friendship, understanding that the bond they formed as adolescents will endure. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Review

The story is so rich that only a team of true hacks could mess up Willa Cather's evocative and heartbreaking story of a young man's emotional odyssey in 1880s Nebraska. Neither distinguished nor particularly memorable, My Antonia is the kind of film that virtually defines TV movies, playing it safe even with material that could hardly rate more than a PG rating. Gone, for instance, is the novel's treatment of the neighbor family in Black Hawk who hire Antonia as a maid; the father in the film is depicted as a simple blowhard obsessed with the appearances his servants create by misbehaving in public, whereas Cather portrayed him as a sexual predator of those girls. Except for Elina Lowensohn's vibrant central performance, none of the actors evince much energy, most crucially Neil Patrick Harris in the lead. Granted, Jimmy Burden is something of a passive character, but Harris just doesn't suggest any of the emotional turmoil that Cather captured so eloquently. The strongest portrayal in the film is the plight of European immigrants and in particular the young women. As Antonia plaintively says, "Girls like me don't get chances," and although she almost blows what she thinks is her best shot, she does land on her feet--no thanks to the self-absorbed Jimmy. A longer film might have given more screen time to the liberated character of Lena Lingard, Antonia's Swedish friend and Jimmy's first real lover, to enhance this point. Victoria Riskin's script is adequate, but it's forced at times to resort to voiceover narration that spells out what adroitly composed dialogue and more forceful direction might have dramatized. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Cast

Mira Furlan; Neil Patrick Harris - Jimmy Burden; Jason Robards, Jr.; Elina Löwensohn - Antonia; Eva Marie Saint

Credit

Joseph Sargent - Director, Victoria Riskin - Screenwriter

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