Ron Howard’s sprawling epic of late 19th-century immigration centers on an Irish tenant farmer (Tom Cruise) and a bourgeois lass (Nicole Kidman) who spar and bicker before falling in love, moving to grimy, brawling Boston, and finally homesteading out west. Confidently toggling between melodrama, meet-cute comedy, and action movie heroics, Far and Away was among Howard’s most formally and technically ambitious, and was the first Hollywood film shot on 70mm in a decade—best displayed in the film’s thrilling finale depicting the Oklahoma Land Rush. Then-newlyweds, Cruise and Kidman are heedlessly committed to their roles, particularly Cruise, whose surprisingly brawny physique proves convincing as his Joseph Donnelly turns to bare-knuckle boxing upon arriving to the New World.
Presented alongside Immigration Nation.
