Customer Reviews

Sommersby

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This review refers to the DVD edition (Warner Bros) of "Sommersby".....

No matter how often I watch this wonderful story, I am always left sighing at the end. Lucky for me DVDs have been invented, or for sure I would have worn out several tapes by now. "Sommersby" has got something for everyone. The romantic in you will love the deep and passionate love story. For those that love to try to solve a mystery,this is a good one. It's a period piece set post civil war, and has some excellent court-room drama as well.

Jack Sommersby has left his small southern town of Vine Hill to fight in the Civil War. He hasn't been seen or heard from in over six years and is presumed dead. Then all of a sudden, one day he turns up to find his town ravaged by the effects of the war, and his lovely wife Laurel, now promised to another. He seems to pick up right where he left off though,renewing friendships,becoming very much a part of the everyday life in the town, and having his wife back where she belongs... in his bed.Up to now, we only get a little hint that someting is amiss..."Jethro", his faithful dog, doesnt seem to recognize him.

As the story progresses,and Jack and Laurel fall more deeply in love then ever, we have more and more reason to believe that Jack is not who he says he is. Could he possibly be an imposter with an uncanny resemblence to Sommersby? Do the townfolk realize this and accept him at his word because he has brought a new hope and a new vitality to Vine Hill? And what about Laurel, did she know all along? When Jack Sommersby must stand trial for his life will the truth finally come out? Who is Jack Sommersby???

Richard Gere and Jodie Foster have an incredible chemistry and you will feel the intense love they share on screen. The supporting cast turn in outstanding performances as well. James Earl Jones as a black judge who must put up with the extreme prejudices of the witnesses,Bill Pullman as the jilted and vengeful fiancee,Frankie Faison the ex-slave now becoming a property owner, and young Brett Kelly who's love grows for his new found father all add greatly to the film. And of course,it is always a treat to see Wiiliam Windom make an appearance.The story based on the beautiful French film "The Return of Martin Guerre",is a fabulous remake. The musical score by Danny Elfman is one that will stay with you long after the view,and the photography of Philippe Rosselot is gorgeous.All under the expert direction of Jon Amiel make this one beautiful film.

The DVD presents a beautiful picture in widescreen or a standard version.The color does justice to the lush farmlands. The sound in Dolby Surround(Stereo) is excellent. No special features other than a theatrical trailer. Languages and subtitles are English and French.

"Sommersby" is a film that will leave you thinking about it and maybe sighing a little too.....enjoy...Laurie

To see Sommersby is to understand what eternal and all-encompassing love is. Jodie Foster plays Laurel, wife to Jack Sommersby (Richard Gere). The Sommersby home and land have been ravaged by The Civil War. Laurel's life with Jack had been a war in itself. Fate has taken Jack away to the war for several years and she has had time to recoup and raise their son quietly. Suddenly, Jack returns. Handsome and honorable, war-ravaged townsfolk uphold this returned "hero" and Jack hopes his wife will do the same. But wait. This Jack Sommersby is a changed man. Time away has softened the normally calloused man into a man passionate about reviving his marriage and the prosperity of his village in Vine Hill, Tennessee. Everyone, including Laurel are taken back by his vigor and charm. Time and hard work strengthen the economy and the Sommersby couple are more in love than ever before. This dramatic change causes not only Laurel, but townsfolk to question the identity of this reformed Jack. Tell-tale signs of a forgery of identity soon unravel the clever stitching around Jack's personna. When the law gets involved, inquisitive Laurel switches gears and defends the honor of her well-providing husband. His past soon haunts him and the surrounding lies threaten. Murder charges come into play. If this man is Jack Sommersby, he will hang. If he is the imposter, he faces the shame of his community and the loss of the now-revived land and marriage. Love and Honor collide, forcing the heart to find it's place. "Sommersby" is a desperate, compelling and passionate drama that leaves you with one question: "Where does your heart lie?" Brian La Fountain

Sommersby
Set in the aftermath of the Civil War, Jack Sommersby (Richard Gere) returns, after about six years, to the town of Vine Hill, Tennessee, to find his plantation and house devastated by the ravages of war. Additionally, he encounters his beautiful wife Lauren Sommersby (Jodie Foster), who is actually engaged to another fellow. Sommersby returns as a completely different, loving, working, and caring person, and makes everyone believe he is back. In fact, his romantic relationship with Lauren achieves its most sublime point. He convinces the town to grow tobacco to get out of the wreckage and devastation and is quite successful at that. He even sells pieces of land to dark people to work with.

Everything seems fine until the moment that he is arrested and sent to trail for supposedly killing a man. At this precise moment, his identity is utterly challenged. He is hypothetically not Jack Sommersby, but some other murderer called Townsend. Judie Foster does a superb job at trying to convince the Judge and the Jury that he is not in fact her husband giving away even intimate details. However, Jack himself does the contrary since for him his love for his children and wife and the honor involved are more important than life itself.

I am not about to convey the end of the story. I will only say that this is a great DVD to watch and will leave you wondering who is Jack Sommersby indeed.

By the way, the performances of Richard Gere and Judie Foster are both outstanding, and this is a DVD that you will never forget until the end of your life!

"Sommersby" is both about the cyclical nature of the universe, where matter can be neither created nor destroyed, only changed in state, and a demonstration of that law." Vincent Canby

I loved this film, hated the ending. A southern man comes home from the Civil War and re-enters his life as Jack Sommersby. His wife, thinking he was indeed dead after 6 six years has promised herself to another. Nothing is as it was, and it never will be again. The old Southern plantation has been looted, and there is not much left but the body and souls who inhabit the place. It appears that Jack Sommersby was not the kind of man one really liked unless you were into brutality, drunkenness and slavery. But this new Jack Sommersby is a changed man, "Got hit in my head" he says. The neighbors and the man who was to marry his wife think something is not quite right here. But Jack Sommersby offers his family and his neighbors something they have not seen nor heard in a long time, hope. Hope of making a living and living off the land. Jack Sommersby has wormed his way into their hearts, and they love them. He has also offered his black slaves their own land, and this does not go over well with some. Visions of the KKK. But this new Jack Sommersby is not what he seems, and a trial and the courtroom soon reveal what has been and what is to come.

Jodie Foster, as Laurel Sommersby, is forever more my idol-you know that with a smile or the flick of her eyes what emotion she is feeling. She is the epitome of a southern lady waiting to be undone. After two Academy Awards this may be one of her best performances. However, it is Richard Gere who steals the scenes in my opinion. This is, indeed his best performance, and he is believable as a man who wants to be someone he can be proud of. Bill Pullman who plays the man who wants Laurel's heart is a duplicitous man who will do or say anything to win Laurel back.

And what about the dog, Jethro?

Peter Travers has the best lines in his critique of the film,
"Of special pertinence right now is the new light the film sheds on marriage and the doubts it engenders. Who hasn't asked, What happened to the person I married?"

Highly recommended. prisrob 03-23-08

The Brave One (Wide screen Edition)

An Officer and a Gentleman (Special Collector's Edition)

I am a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. When I went to see this film in the theatre several years ago, I only knew it was a romance based on the French film The Return of Martin Guerre. (I knew nothing about the original film either.) I found Sommersby to be a very charming love story, everything I expected a romance to be. I'm not a fan of Richard Gere, but I enjoyed his performance as Jack and he and Jodie Foster had excellent chemstry. What I didn't expect was the way the film ended. As the film moved towards it's conclusion, I reached for the tissues only to find I didn't have any! I thus sat there struggling to keep the tears at bay (it didn't work :) )

But it's not just a romance, there is a tinge of mystery. Jack Sommersby, we assume from what we see on the screen, was not a nice person before the war. He comes back a changed man -- is it indeed Jack Sommersby -- or is it someone else?

For those who enjoy a good period romance movie, this is an excellent choice. If you enjoy a good cry, again, an excellent choice.

When I wanted to rent this movie, I knew that I picked up a special treasure.

Sommersby is everything a person wants to find in a movie. It is about human spirit and about human nature and how people lives can interact with each other. And a person can find happiness if it is only for a short matter of time.

Jack Sommersby has came back from the war after six years of abstinence. In this time, no one has heard from him until he shows up. And when he does, his wife Laurel honor him by not leaving his side.

Laurel is taken by surprise by this "new" Jack Sommersby. The "old" Jack Sommersby was a drunk, gambler, abuser, and care for no one himself and only himself. Laurel instantly fall for the new Jack, someone who she always wanted and always wanted to fall in love with.

The question pops up in her mind and everyone else's: Can a man really change over six years from a tyrant to a loving saint? Or does he really appears to be who everyone thinks that they know?

Sommersby is about unconditional love, and it is about a man that brings joy and renewal into the lives for others. I certainly never forget Sommersby!

Yes, yes, yes, The Return of Martin Guerre is richer, more textured, more...believable. But what is up with the criticism of this beautiful commercial Hollywood-ized version? The characters portrayed by Jodie Foster and Richard Gere, as - perhaps - strangers, or -- husband and wife -- circa Civil War era has the gloss and emotion of a four-hankie 40s melodrama. The performances of all of the players are superb, and the tense, romantic, suspensful build-up to the truthful revelations, which include salvation and love, is handled with taste and beauty. The musical score provides one of those old-fashioned, almost bombastic themes that signals heartbreak, and there are many of them in this movie. If you love to cry at the movies, you will love this film.

After watching Jodie Foster in "Nell," where she plays a speech-disturbed mountain woman, I was motivated to re-watch "Sommersby." What an actress! What a movie! She has the most "southern" accent of the two lead characters, and although she is a little unbelievable as a field worker, there is sensational chemistry between Foster as "Laurel Sommersby" and her civil war veteran husband, played by strikingly handsome Richard Gere.

This movie is not accurate in all its historical details, for instance, everyone is too clean and well-washed to have been working in the hot fields all day, given the state of personal hygiene at the time. And Gere is just TOO handsome and manly to have spent half a dozen years withering away in a cell as a civil war POW. And the townspeople are soooo easily moved to community action. They are just a mite too credulous given the war-time setting.

But if you prefer dreamy historical romance to stark reality, you will indeed enjoy this film. The narrative progresses without any slow spots from the moment the opening credits roll and we see Gere aka Sommersby burying his dead partner. Then he walks and walks, through the lush scenery of the war-ravaged south, until the viewer is as ready for "home" as he must have been relieved to finally arrive. Greeted like a treasured hero by the townspeople, he is then taken in by a skeptical wife despite not a word between them for six years.

With great tact and consideration, Jack Sommersby proceeds to court his wife, leading to many tantalizing moments and lots of significant looks between them. In the meantime, he devises a plan to buy seeds to grow burley tobacco in overgrown fields on the Sommersby estate, using the labor of the townspeople. They will not be sharecroppers, but owners, and even the "coloured folk" will have the option to buy, which later leads to a KKK cross-burning scene.

Complications result from the fact that, during her husband's long absence, Laurel Sommersby had been keeping company with Orrin, another veteran, and although she tells her husband she hadn't been kissed, the rival lover hovers in jealous rage, and when his chance comes to do harm to Jack Sommersby, he takes it.

All along, Laurel finds herself wondering "Who is this man in my kitchen?" because before he went away 6 years ago, her husband was a no-good drinker and gambler who abused her and didn't love her. The man who returns to her is wholly changed, a considerate lover, a caring father, a responsible member of the community. Is he really Jack Sommersby, or an imposter?

When the tobacco crops are growing well and standing tall in the fields, the married lovers are delighting in their happiness, and just after the first baby is born, two federal marshalls arrive to carry Jack away to Nashville be tried for murder. I won't give away the ending, but I cried and cried all through the last 20 minutes or so of this touching romantic film. You never do find out if "Sommersby" is himself or not. Either way, he has changed for the better.

This is definitely an enjoyable film. If you are a fan of romantic historical romance, you will enjoy this delicious love story.

I ordered this movie as a gift for my mother and it arrived promptly and in perfect condition. She has been trying to rebuild her movie collection ever since the switch from VHS to DVD and I know she will love to have this movie again. It is one of her favorites. I would recommend this seller and this product to a friend.

Rewatched this movie yet again last weekend (and umpteenth times since its debut in 1993) but continue to marvel at the poignancy and cathartic experience of it all. It is certainly not one of those predictable types with the usual 'happily ever after' Hollywoodesque ending snapped on at the end to lure romantics far and wide (in that, I include the likes of Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan,...I'm sure you get my point).

For those of you who have yet to peruse this romantic period piece - I won't spoil it by revealing the ending here - just remember to have your tissues ready at hand - Jodie Foster's and Richard Gere's manifestation of love were so believably moving that I still have problems holding back my tears from repeated viewing....

Though without the inclusion of any bonus materials (the studios may consider releasing a special edition perhaps?), the DVD is a must-have for collectors of romantic movies.