Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

annuskavdpol This movie is America. The musician captured the soul of America, or was it the movie that did that? Through financial hardships it seems that there was still overall beauty and love for the country to be found in every corner. The black train rolling through the country side, and the chase of the American dream, only to be confronted with desolate treatment and less then equal human rights. The downtrodden suffered greatly with zero hope. Anger and despair was reflected in the guitar music. America became the place that it is today because of people like this guitar player. Woody was so emotionally attached to the suffering of the people that he neglected himself and his family, or were the two adults just not a good match? Perhaps they did not share the same ideals. I know in my past, I found an individual, who listened to Woody Guthrie, and whom understood me, but it is only after seven years of distance, that i comprehend the depth of the connection and at the same time, the loss. Like Woody, i followed my dream and neglected family. I followed passion and fell into a dark isolation, and i wonder if this is what happened to Woody, especially since he ended up in a hospital for his final years. It is how Woody spent his last days, weeks, months that bother me. His suffering seems so great both internally and externally and even though his songs on his guitar captured human suffering in America like a photograph, I cannot help but wonder if he could not attain even an ounce of happiness in his lifetime. This movie is about socialism and communism. It is opposing capitalism. Here capitalism is not shown in a good light. It is exposed to show the suffering and slave labour of the marginalized versus the elite. In this movie, the idea of the criminal is blurred, as is it not criminal to treat individuals like slaves to make a financial profit? Who benefits? The rich or the marginalized? Who voices the concerns of the marginalized, if not for Woody Guthrie? Who voices the concerns in 2014? Are not the voices of the underdog marked as delusional, and silenced by the powerful 1 %? Or are the voices silenced because they are considered criminal in a capitalist society? How did we get to this point in revisionism? How did we get to this point in time?

jzappa There are visuals in Hal Ashby's Bound For Glory so real or so becoming that I might have to withdraw statements I've made in the past about Ashby not being a visual filmmaker. But the subdued but all-consuming absorption in the imagery eventually takes its toll on the movie's intonation. Scene after scene unfolds at such a patient rhythm, with such forecast and subtlety, that ultimately we appear to be experiencing a moving slideshow of the Depression. The film has a serious nobility and formality, which is fine---I found it fascinating that Woody Guthrie seems to take a backseat through his own biopic and that it is less about him and more about the time in which he lived---however it doesn't tend to have much life, which would be enthralling.The film maintains thorough fidelity to that adventure. Another element I admire greatly is that there's not an ingenuous frame in it, not a moment when we sense the significance of Guthrie's life has been arbitrated in favor of Hollywood license-taking. David Carradine's performance as Guthrie finds just the correct pitch between his dignity and inborn candor. There can hardly have been a period film before it with such affectionate heed to every historical detail, to the ways cars and dresses and living rooms and roadside diners looked during the Depression. We learn so much unconsciously through the mise-en-scene. All of these attributes have been treated cautiously, and with reverence. And ironically, as much as those elements are top-heavy compared to the drama itself, they are all done with the same deliberate subtlety with which Ashby lenses his other films. The imagery never points to itself; it's just there for us to subliminally take in.Nevertheless Bound For Glory is altogether a very sluggish experience. Each scene is organized so deliberately, is framed by immortal cinematographer Haskell Wexler with such virtuosity, is played with such gravity, that ultimately the movie feels too uniform. We want more drollery, more cheek, more of an clue that Guthrie had vinegar infused with his altruism. Anyone who loves movies or is intrigued by Guthrie should see Bound For Glory, though it'll be a rewarding affair that's very languid.There are two shots that are especially unforgettable: One is an incredible image showcasing a dust storm nearing Woody's little home town, and another is a shot on top of a freight train, held for minutes without a cut, while Woody and an accompanying vagabond share worldviews while the train carries them past the infinite fields, into the pitch black of a tunnel, reappears, feels about to run forever. However, the movie's political text, the doggedness of Woody and a musician friend to unionize the migrant workers, is calculable and repetitious. Guthrie's politics were evidently pivotal to his music, and yet in the film they feel virtually unnecessary. The matters of state and activism could have arisen naturally from the story, rather than being wedged in.This is not the only film I've found to be credited as the first film in which the invention of the Steadicam was used, but apparently it is, and that may account for its status as a contemporary classic. It may also largely account for the arresting fascination of the viewer with the Great Depression than the subject of the Great Depression does. So Bound For Glory isn't quite the great film it could have been. However, it is one of the most gorgeous films ever made, in its cinematography, in its locations, in its reconstruction of the America that Woody Guthrie found.

kosmasp If you would've asked me, what I thought of the movie, right after I saw it, I would've probably gave it a lower rating. But the movie grows on you. Carradine's performance is mesmerizing to say the least and his underdog is more than likable. You can see that he has his priorities straight, even if they get him in all sorts of trouble, be it at home or at work.The problem of the movie is, that it tries so hard to depict a historical character in a short period of time. Well "short" might be a stretch here, seeing that the pace of the movie itself is pretty slow, which make you think, the movie is longer than it actually is. Not really much is happening and the same issues get played twice or more times, with almost the same conclusion. The stoic Carradine character remains the same. This might be truthful (I can't say, because I haven't read any bios on the real man portrayed here), but could also become boring after awhile for quite a few people.

tieman64 "I've seen lots of funny men in this world. Some will rob you with a six-gun and some will rob you with a fountain pen" – Woody Guthrie Set during the Great Depression, Hal Ashby's "Bound for Glory" follows folk singer Woody Guthrie as he evolves from a lowly sign painter in Texas to a popular radio singer in California. Guthrie's cross-country journey was itself commonplace during the Dust Bowl years. This decades long period saw dust storms and droughts ravaging the American panhandle, conditions which led to an exodus of farmers, most of whom lost their land and travelled West, eventually settling in California, where they were ruthlessly exploited by land barons who pitted worker against worker.Like most of Ashby's lead characters, Woody's thus a non-conformist with a strong sense of moral outrage. Ashby paints him as a wandering artist, hopping from town to town, riding trains, hitching rides, meeting folk and developing his conscience. It's not long before his songs become weapons; a means to rally men against social injustice.And so as the film progresses, Woody begins to inspire people to unionise and organise (against farm barons and landlords) and morphs into a kind of romantic anarchist-socialist figure who lives to fight and loves to sing.Like John Ford's "Grapes of Wrath", "Bound for Glory's" view of the Great Depression mixes inappropriately cosy postcard images with gut wrenching hardship. Families struggle to make ends meet, food is scarce and jobs are few. But where Ashby and Ford differ most is in the latter's sense of optimism; things will be better, if only we keep singing. If only we keep chanting, our guitars in hand. Ashy, you sense, is a bit more pessimistic. Understandable, considering the era in which he was active.The title of Ashby's 1979 film, "Being There", was perhaps inspired by German philosopher Martin Heidegger's magnum opus "Being and Time". In his book, Heidegger coined the term "Dasein" or "Being there", which referred to existence in the most minimal sense. By using the expression "Being There", Heidegger called attention to the fact that a human being cannot be taken into account except as a being existing in the middle of a larger "fabric". To be human is to be fixed, embedded and immersed in the physical, literal, tangible day to day. But Heidegger believed that certain people could escape this fabric, or perhaps be more attuned to it via a heightened self reflexivity, thought most were too preoccupied to do so.In "Being There", Ashby had actor Peter Sellers essentially play a brain damaged child called Chance. Depending upon one's reading of the film, Chance's innocence either represented a kind of perceptual freedom which allowed him to unknowingly see beyond the delusive forms that mask everyday reality, or the exact opposite, Chance a figure of "chance", of lawless, nonsensical irrationality. Regardless, "Bound for Glory's" Guthrie is obviously intended to be juxtaposed with Chance. Gutherie's a simple man with few possessions and few ties. But while others are on their hands and knees, working and toiling in the dirt, Woody stands upright and sees the world both as it is, and in terms of possibilities instead of limitations. Whever someone tries to force their frameworks upon him, Woody rejects them (marriage, family, job, class, money etc) and goes in search of better paths. These path may not be visible, or indeed even exist, but what matters most is that Woody inspires others to join him on his search.8.5/10 - Though Ashby fails to delve deeply into Guthrie's life, preferring to reduce him to an archetypal "wandering artist" character, this is nevertheless a fine, era defining film, and features some stunning cinematography by the legendary Haskell Wexler. Worth two viewings.