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Must See Movie...

Excellent but underrated film

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

To put many previous posters out of their misery, I'm happy to say that this magnificent mini series is now available on DVD. It is not cheap, but for something which will be watched over and over again, it is worth it. I have had it on VHS tape (complete with commercials) since it was first shown and have watched it whenever I want to recall the winter nights when we would curl up in front of the fire and wallow in a few nights of great TV. The series beautifully recreated what must have been a hard life for the early pioneers as they pushed the frontier further and further west. I particularly loved the 18th century dialogue and the rustic frolicking at the wedding of Sayward and "the hostile", after the failure to marry him off to an available spinster. the storyline which saddened me the most was that of the teacher, a refined and educated woman who fell in love with the only educated man in whom she had any contact with. How desperately lonely her life must have been. The lovely songs, although few, added greatly to the atmosphere. They sure don't make them like this any more.

This was a great movie but the characters all had interesting view points. Mistress Bartram was the school teacher who was educated. She is thrown into an affair with the married (highly educated)man to Elizabeth Montgomery's character, who was uneducated. The mistress became pregnant. This was the real awakening for me. Because her lover was married she set out one night to the local tavern to pick up whoever she could so she could get married and have her baby. There were no educated men that were available so she married someone beneath her intelligence and that was the most horrible punishment anyone could pay. No way out. Elizabeth's character rose above and met the higher standards of her husband and worked to become educated. Dorrie Kavanaugh who was also a beautiful woman sadly died a few years after making this film. I will always remember her as having a style that no one has ever duplicated. She was graceful with culture and intelligence, a very beautiful woman.

Here is a wild one for you. I saw The Awakening Land almost accidentally when I was getting ready to go to college in 1978. It has been rattling around in my brain all these time, almost 30 years, as a singular example of excellent television. The story and the characters stuck in my mind as a paragon of excellent writing, the best I have seen in a TV script. It wasn't until this night that I learned that it was a three part miniseries. I never knew that. I only saw the one episode (I think the first) where Saird meets and marries the Solitary. Now I am going nuts trying to find where I can get the other two episodes on DVD. Looks like I can't. Guess I will get the books. spike

This mini series was based upon a series of books, The Trees, The Fields and The Town, by Conrad Richter, who also wrote A Light in the Forest. I am in the process of re-reading them, and I 'see' many of the scenes I remember from the show.This mini series was also one of my favorites, I keep wishing that it would be released on Video/DVD.Elizabeth Montgomery did a good job of playing "Saird", the woodsy who was responsible for building a town. Hal Holbrook was believable as the Solitary. What surprised me was reading that William Macy played Will Beagle, the Bound Boy.