I think you're looking at Miss Pendrake completely backwards. She was a "whore" married to a so-called religious man at the beginning who reverts back to her nature at the end. Silas Pendrake is a preacher in name only, unless you consider an average televangelist today to be a true preacher. He's mostly concerned with eating and beating the "sin" out of his adopted son. I realize that you don't get much time with these characters but it's obvious to me the way Miss Pendrake talks about Jesus and Moses that she has no understanding of the Bible. She does seem to enjoy putting Jack's hand up to her chest though and giving him the best bed he ever had in his life.
Oh, no, this is exactly how I looked at her: like she was living a lie and trying to convince herself it was true. By "religious woman" I just meant that she was, technically, religious, not that she was actually pious.
Anyway, I just found her character a bit hammy and the reversal a bit obvious. Just a matter of taste, I expect, there. I might have liked it more if it wasn't one of 3 or 4 such reversals (contraries!), because after the first the rest feel telegraphed.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Chief Dan George. I'm going to date myself again and simply say that he is AWESOME! The man could do no wrong in that movie and should have taken the Oscar which was awarded to John Mills. I'm also surprised how you can feel ambivalent about a film with so much in it. Did you think the film was sending mixed messages or did you have a problem with it from a political standpoint?
Hmm, I honestly can't say I thought he was awesome. Perhaps I was unable to appreciate his performance because it is, by definition, supposed to be fairly understated. He certainly gets points for saying some of his lines with a straight face, and I guess you could say some of the gags are setup better because he seems to be on an even keel all the time, so that when he says something funny it's all the more surprising. It's as if he himself doesn't realize it's funny, or doesn't care.
Gawd, I love it, Yoda!!! It was not the response I was expecting, but how refreshing to have someone look at a classic film and say, "So what?" Way to go, guy!
I think this happens to me with films that contain a lot, but don't always have the clearest message (or, at least, the clearest to me). They start to jumble together. I think if I sat down and sorted through the elements this would probably change a bit, but I dunno.
Now this does surprise me! In assessing Little Big Man, Gump wouldn't have been the film that would leap to my mind, although that "rhythm between drama and comedy" does make sense upon reflection--just wouldn't have popped to my mind.
Well, label me surprise that you're surprised! The comparison was so obvious to me that I figured everyone else would have made it long before I joined in. Granted, Crabb isn't a simpleton, but he's certainly quite naive at points. Both have frame stories for the majority of the film, lots of voiceover narration, drama and comedy smushed together into close quarters, both protagonists find themselves on every side of every issue and woven all throughout the events of their day, and both have a number of elements that seem to embody the phrase "tall tale."
Anyway, it'd probably be fair to say I'd have liked
Little Big Man a Little Bit More if I hadn't seen
Forrest Gump first.