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Undescribable Perfection

Absolutely Brilliant!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This film is the basic story of 1969, Marty and Pearl Kantrowitz a couple who married young and have two children, on vacation in upstate NY. Anything north of the city is "upstate" and they take vacation near the well known "Nevele" and Concord Hotels, only at a more down at heel bungalow campground.The atmosphere of the Catskills bungalow and the rather tacky but fun atmosphere is realistic. Tovah Feldshuh as Lillian is excellent, she realizes something is amiss with Pearl and lets her son know, calling him in Brooklyn.The Moon walk itself is secondary to the actual story of America in the turbulent 1960's, Woodstock, and social unrest, but the story is not heavy handed.Nor is it a complete miss like the faint hearted "1969" film with Robert Downey Jr., which attempts to address the same time period in America, and misses the point. Entirely.Pearl Kantrowitz, well portrayed by Diane Lane feels something is missing, she has married too young, and subsequently meets Walker Jerome, a hippie who is known as the "Blouse man" (announced over the intercom by Julie Kavner's unmistakable voice ), when he brings his bus of clothing and jewelry to the camp site. Viggo Mortensen as Walker Jerome, is believable as a young man who eventually gets involved with Pearl, hoping for more.The story rings true because it is simple, but believable and even sad. The affair with him, the ultimate fact that she realizes her life is passing by, but she does love her husband and children as well. and its time to say good bye to lofty dreams. There is a decent soundtrack including Joni Mitchell, and many other gems from that era. Liev Schreiber as Marty Kantrowitz is sympathetic and funny, attempting to dance to Jimi Hendrix at the end of the film.The story is memorable without cheap sentiment, and a rare thing we see from Hollywood deserves praise. It is not a cheap romantic comedy with over the top actors, just a believable vignette which will touch you as the audience.During the credits I noticed it was produced by Dustin Hoffman as well as Tony Goldwyn. Well done. 9/10.

I am writing this review as a non-American. I have watched other movies about wives betraying their husbands and have liked them. For example I liked Unfaithful also featuring Diane Lane. This particular movie however, I felt was depicting the process of betrayal in very unnatural way. Main character Pearl decides to have an extra marital affair and even when caught does not show the emotions that I would expect from a character like hers. She decides to leave at night while her mother-in- law is asking her not to go. Mother-in-law finds out that she is having an affair but does very little about it. Daughter finds out that her mother is sleeping with another man and she shows her anger for mere two minutes. Husband finds out that wife is screwing another man and he just throws the milk and drives car fast. At the end all are fine. I personally feel that even in American family in 1969 this is not what happens after an extra marital affair. This movie almost seemed like the director was telling the audience that this is how you should behave after having an affair. Very unconvincing story-line.

This is a movie made in the 1990s about the 1960s with the moral obtuseness of the 1970s and the cookie-cutter, generic storytelling of the 1980s.The Kantrowitzes are a working class Jewish family spending their summer at a Catskills resort during the time of the first Moon landing. They don't have much money, so Marty (Liev Schreiber) has to go back to work during the week while his wife, children and his mother spend their days in a tiny bungalow in a lakeside campsite. His wife Pearl (Diane Lane) is bored, unsatisfied and feels like life has passed her by. We know this because Pearl repeatedly tells people that. Then she meets Walker Jerome (Viggo Mortensen), a handsome man in a bus who stops by the resort to sell blouses to all the Jewish ladies. Pearl begins a torrid affair with the free-spirited Walker, which culminates in some sort of weird emotional breakdown at the Woodstock concert. But when her family discovers Pearl's secret, she is faced with losing a life that Pearl realizes she really loves. There's also some stuff about young Alison Kantrowitz (Anna Paquin) becoming a woman that summer, but it doesn't seem to have much of a point other than giving Anna Paquin something to do.This story isn't exactly original, but the actors all do a good job and there was certainly the potential for something worthwhile here. It never really amounts to anything, though, for two reasons.Firstly, for a story that is fundamentally about betrayal, none of the folks who are betrayed ever get that upset. When Pearl's mother-in-law (Tovah Feldshuh) finds out about the affair, she's angry with Pearl for about 15 seconds. When Alison finds out, she's angry with her mother for almost a minute. When Marty finds outs, he's angry for maybe 5 minutes at most. When the film gets to the part about adultery tearing Kantrowitzes apart, it studiously avoids letting any of the characters feel pained for any significant length of time. Earlier on, when the movie is supposed to be about the illicit romance of the affair, Pearl doesn't seem like a desperately unhappy woman reaching out for something to fill the void in her heart. She seems like an apathetically disinterested woman who gets bored easily. So, we're presented with a woman who doesn't seem to have a good reason to commit adultery and a family that doesn't seem to mind that much when she does.A Walk On The Moon refuses to let any of these characters be the bad guy. Pearl isn't the bad guy, Marty isn't, the mother-in-law isn't, even Walker Jerome isn't allowed to be a bad person. Not making people out to be "the bad guy" might be a wonderful way to go through life, but it's a terrible way to tell a story. When you're watching this film you should either want Pearl to stay with her family or run away with Walker, but the movie refuses to let you feel that strongly either way. I think it's an attempt to reflect the moral and social confusion of the 60s, but an ethically and thematically confusing movie is usually not that entertaining.The other problem with A Walk On The Moon is that it is probably the WASPiest film about Jews you'll ever watch. There's a few scattered moments of ethnic sentiment and culture, but this story could have been about Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Atheists or what have you. These filmmakers may have been trying to say something about the universality of this situation, but why give it a distinctly ethnic background in the first place? It feels a little bit like The Cosby Show, where these characters are Jews but there's nothing particularly Jewish about them.If you rent this film, you will get some brief glimpses at Diane Lane's rack and Viggo Mortensen's butt. I'm pretty sure you can find those things in better movies than this.

"A Walk on the Moon" has a teen in it, but it's definitely a grown-up movie. It helps to remember 1969 though one does wince at some of the inaccuracies as too much cultural symbolism is thrown into that summer. Hey, where's the rain at Woodstock? - it was only nice weather on the Friday. Some of the music was inaccurate - what were the odds of turning on the radio in 1969 and hearing "Sally Go Round the Roses" from 1962? Why would someone from NYC claim they couldn't afford college and not consider what's now CUNY?This is Liev Schreiber's first grown-up movie I think; he was quite good in Shakespeare in the Park last summer. Some reviewers bashed the movie because Schreiber is so good (especially as he discovers the power of Dylan and Jimi Hendrix) that one sympathizes with both the adulterer and the cuckold - gee but ain't life complicated, as what comes across is the importance of family. Too bad the Blouse Man (very appealing Viggo Mortensen) is just basically a hippie and he's not a real person, but everyone else is. Anna Paquin as a teen discovering that her parents are people too was wonderful. Diane Lane's NY accent does waver quite a bit.I lost my objectivity whenever Tovah Feldshuh spoke. As the grandmother she sounded so much like my grandma, who of course was alive in 1969, that I practically cried every time she was on the screen, though mine had a thicker Yiddish accent. All in all, a very touching movie.(Originally written 4/11/1999)