Customer Reviews

White Oleander

5 star:		(57)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is one of very few examples of how a great book can be made into an equally good movie.

Screenplay is brilliant, story line is very closely kept with the book, which is always a must contrary to popular beliefs. Directing is excellent, casting even better. Watching these actors playing these characters almost made me forget that I was watching the movie and not the real life. Watching Astrid shad her innocence and step into womanhood through hardship and deception was as magnificent to watch as it was painful. And should I even speak of Michelle Pfeifer? She has an Oscar written all over her for that performance. Her glares alone deserve a recognition. Lets not forget excellent performances by Renee Zelwegger and Robin Wright Penn.

For all those (man) who think this is a chick flick (much like I thought before I watched it) it is not. This is a story of love, deception, transformation and letting go. A story about how all of us have to find our own path in life regardless of obstacles.

All filmmakers should take notes, because this is how you tell a story. Bravo

White Oleander, featuring Michelle Pfeiffer and Alison Lohman, is the movie based on the book by Janet Fitch. Viewers of the Oprah Winfrey daytime television show and readers will recall that this book was one of Oprahs book club selections. Now this compelling and disturbing book has been brought to the silver screen in what many viewers will agree was an intriguing and well-crafted movie. And rarely, if ever in my opinion, has a movie been so finely done or as faithful to the book as was done in this movie. In addition the cast was well chosen and the performances are creatively superb, handling a most difficult subject.

Michelle Pfeiffer, in the lead role, plays Ingrid Magnusson, a single parent and artist who is raising her adolescent daughter Astrid played by Alison Lohman. Ingrid is an incredibly selfish woman with a Bohemian lifestyle who treats Astrid more like a friend than her child. While Ingrids life is dictated by her passions and whims, Astrid is merely a bystander to the lifestyle Ingrid dictates for them. When she is angered by the rejection of her current lover and while Astrid sits in their car, Ingrid poisons her lover with the inner juice of a white oleander plant ultimately killing this man. When Ingrid is arrested by the police, Astrid is removed from their home by social services and becomes a ward of the state. Now the focus of the movie shifts from Astrid as Ingrids daughter and work in progress to Astrid, a child who will become much too familiar with the foster care system in Southern California. Unfortunately for Astrid, the foster homes she stays in are less than happy situations for her and she also must contend with Ingrids views of her foster mothers as she goes from home to home, learning more about the seamier side of life than any child should have to learn at this pivotal time in her life. And all the while Astrid remains loyal to Ingrid as she continues to be subjected to her when she visits Ingrid in prison.

This is a movie populated mainly by an all female cast. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Ingrid with a mixture of anger and compassion about her situation and Astrids circumstances. And both Renee Zellwegger and Robin Wright Penn shine as two very different types of foster mothers who greatly influence Astrids life. But if the movie belongs to one actor it is Astrid played by Alison Lohman who shines as the confused young woman forced to face life as an adult way before her time. And the last scene as Astrid becomes an artist in her own right and creates valises filled with the faces and objects of her life which remains with the viewer long after the movie ends.

I found this to be an excellent movie especially since I read the book. The director and other associates are to be commended for tastefully presenting a difficult subject to the audience in such a fine manner. One is left with a feeling of hope that Astrid, despite her early difficulties will succeed as an adult.

This was an intense, powerful extraordinarily well done movie that is so good it hurts. Think Sophie's choice. It's about a teen-aged daughter whose mother gets herself sent to jail for a long time, leaving the daughter to drift from foster home to foster home. We see a sweet kid exposed to situations that turn her hard, angry, jaded. And while we watch this we know that this happens every day, every minute to kids all over the world, millions of them.

Michelle Pfeifer is amazing as the self absorbed, possibly borderline possibly sociopathic mother who tries to manipulate her daughter remotely, from jail. Alison Lohman plays the teenage daughter. She does a great job and shows terrific promise as a versatile actor. With her next film, Matchstick men, directed by Ridley Scott, she's off to a great start, with a good half dozen films already under her belt.

This is a great movie, but don't expect to walk out feeling uplifted. Try feeling like you've been hit in the stomach. Still, it is worth seeing, really worth it.

White Oleandar is a very "between the lines" type of movie. Very intense drama up front as Astrid deals with different foster homes. She is the young daughter of a mother who kills her boyfriend. It gives one a glimpse of the perils of the foster home system, yet, has an underlying message of a child who grows into a woman, and has to divorce herself from the controlling influence of her mother. I watched this movie again, in order to understand all of the underlying hidden messages. It also has a wonderful cast. Michelle Pffeifer is as usual strong and beautiful. Allison Lohman who plays Astrid, is wonderful as a child of 12 maturing into a teenager, and a young woman. I loved Robin Wright Penn as Starr, the jealous foster mother. Renee Zellwegger stands out as Claire, Astrid's second foster mother, who is loving, but insecure. She also is a threat to Astrid's own mother, who is jealous of the relationship between Claire and her daughter.. I recommend this movie to anyone. It is a classic... The book is just as good as the movie

White Oleander was a relatively good adaptation from the wonderful novel by Janet Fitch. Some of my favorite relationships weren't included in the movie, but of course everything can't be incorporated. Alison Lohman stole the show, acting side by side with big-time actresses such as Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger, and Robin Wright Penn (who all did excellent jobs as well). White Oleander is about Astrid's (Lohman) journey from foster home to foster home and the relationships she makes along the way. She must overcome adversity, and deal with the fact that her domineering mother is in prison for murder. Even from the cell, her mother (Pfeiffer) has a large impact on her daughter's life. Astrid's eyes are opened along the way, as she faces the hardest years of her life alone.

I just saw this movie in the theater and was prepared for the worst. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see how incredibly good it was! I can't understand why this movie has received bad reviews. The storyline drew me in from the beginning and the acting was top notch....Pfeifer actually gave me the creeps at times. I was also rather shocked by some of the conditions of foster homes....don't these people have to go through some sort of screening process?!!! Anyway, do yourself a favor and disregard the negative reviews and see it for yourself.

Kudos must go to screenwriter Mary Agnes Donogue for transforming a very interior book into an intriguing film. Without ever pandering to the lowest common denominator, director Kosminsky has used cast and screenplay to great advantage in this fascinating and complex tale. Pfeiffer is in top form as a beautiful and brilliant narcissicistic woman capable of murder. And Alison Lohman is splendid as the daughter, Astrid, who has inherited her mother's beauty, talent and intelligence (but not her self-absorption) along with (however reluctantly) the more rational of her mother's life lessons.

It is only with the greatest reluctance that children give up on their parents, even the worst of them. And it is particularly difficult to give up on someone who is beautiful; the child is forever searching for an inner beauty that will match up with the exterior. At the same time, Astrid is, via the foster care system, being offered to one new mother after another. Robin Wright Penn and Renee Zellweger both turn in solid, if uninspired, performances as two of them. Saving herself from potentially explosive situations by resorting to long-ago given advice from her mother, Astrid grows both into herself and away from her mother--ultimately demanding truth in exchange for the promise to tell lies in court that might see Pfeiffer released from prison.

All the characters are fully developed, with the exception of Noah Wyle who is pretty much wasted in this film; he's got a fairly stock role with not much room for improvement--it's a part almost anyone could have played. Young Patrick Fugit fares better as Ingrid's friend and, later, as her partner. He manages to invest his role with an aura of hard-won wisdom, acceptance, and warmth.

What is striking is the cinematography and an absence of filters except in certain key scenes. Zellweger, in particular, is shot in harsh, flat light that makes her appear visibly lacking, flawed somehow, as she is in fact. Pfeiffer is lit in an almost ethereal fashion that highlights the beauty that is so key to the narrative structure. Beautiful people can get away with all kinds of bad behavior, even with madness, but not, in this case, with murder. Her performance has a stillness that is unsettling--without doubt her best in a very long time. She and Lohman are entirely believable as mother and daughter and while Pfeiffer's character isn't as fully defined as it was in the novel, there is enough subtext there for the viewer to feel her arrogant, malign power.

This is a very worthwhile film--primarily for its investigation of the always treacherous terrain of mother-daughter relationships.
Highly recommended.

In an ideal world, one imagines humans being free to love and never feeling rejected or having to reject. A world where loneliness doesn't exist and people open their hearts to allow love to flow freely through the world.

Perhaps as human beings we can never reach this higher plane of existence since we struggle so much with the idea of unconditional love. Love is at times taken away at the first instance of another's rejection. To give love at times means to accept hurt or to be hurt by those you try to love in an unconditional way.

This movie really captured my attention from beginning to end. You can feel everything the characters experience. That is so rare these days. You can feel the hate, the love, the fear, the loneliness, the rejection, the acceptance.

There is an element of dark beauty in this sometimes emotionally intense drama adapted from Janet Fitch's bestseller (an Oprah's Book Club selection).

There are elements in this movie which seem to be mocking religious beliefs, however if you look deeply into the movie and see the true meaning, what I think the movie is saying is: "It is more important to live out your beliefs and do good to others, than to say you believe in God/Jesus and then to treat others with disrespect." Or at least the main message is that you should live what you believe.

At first, I thought this was going to be another "bash religion" movie, and I was pleasantly surprised at the end.

Some of the main themes include the concepts of loneliness and making mistakes. Astrid Magnussen (Alison Lohman who is a great actress and I can't wait to see her in other films) is not only looking for a father figure in her life, she has had to deal with a less-than-perfect foster care system where she becomes "Nobody's" child. This is a world where more than 450,000 children are living in a foster care situation. She is a victim of her own desire to be loved by a father and sees loving older men (her foster "father") as a way to obtain love. She is therefore the victim of sexual abuse.

Astrid's mother, Ingrid Magnussen (Michelle Pfeiffer), rejects religion and believes her daughter must fight the urge to accept love because she feels loneliness. She thinks to survive, you must fight and destroy. So, when the man in her life cheats on her, she kills him with the poison of oleander flowers in a fit of jealousy. She destroys not only her life, but her daughters life.

Once her mother is in prison, Astrid must struggle to survive in various Los Angeles foster homes. She encounters a "not so" born-again Christian (not exactly an example of Christ shall we say), a suicidal housewife and a Russian business woman. Only the housewife really seems to give Astrid what she longs for: "A mother who cares about her and shows her the meaning of love."

But as the story unfolds, we see that time and time again, it is the men in this story who seem to be making the lives of the women more difficult. When the housewife (Renée Zellweger) has to chose between keeping Astrid or sending her back to save her marriage, she hurts more people than just herself to keep a man who she has already lost.

Not only does Astrid have to live in these disharmonious households, she is the victim her own beauty and seems to be living in a world where women hate her.

At a young age, she has to deal with neglect, desertion and brutality. All she wants to find is acceptance, self-worth, a sense of security and love.

Throughout the time her mother is in prison, they write letters to each other. Astrid must decide if she will follow her mother's advice or the deepest desires of her heart.

A poetic start, a tragic story about the loneliness of the human condition and a great ending. This is about survival and about finding love. This movie is beautiful in a painful way.

~The Rebecca Review

Based on the best-selling novel by Janet Fitch, "White Oleander" provides a fascinating portrait of a heartbroken, wounded soul trying, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to overcome the many adversities fate seems determined to throw in her way. Astrid Magnussen is a hopeful, loving, all around "good kid" who just happens to be surrounded by a world full of hurting, dysfunctional adults. And none fits that description more than her very own mother, a beautiful and successful photographer who is sentenced to 35 years in prison after she poisons her unfaithful boyfriend (with the white oleander that gives the film its title). Left to the equally dysfunctional foster care system, Astrid is sent to live with one troubled "family" after another while her mother, fearing she will lose her hold on Astrid, seeks for ways to sabotage her daughter's happiness from behind bars.

Much of the criticism leveled against this film has revolved around the perceived episodic nature of the screenplay. The charge seems to be that, just as we are becoming interested in a particular milieu or set of characters, the story drops them and moves on to a new place and a new group of people. I couldn't disagree more. If anything, the freeform looseness of the script lends the film an air of greater believability, a more lifelike quality than it would otherwise have had had the story been more conventionally "plotted out." The use of such a structure shows that the storytellers are far more concerned with exploring the characters than with merely delivering a neatly tied-up and packaged narrative. This is fully Astrid's story, and the "episodic nature" of the tale brings to it the quality of an epic journey, as we join this one young woman in her search for love and meaning in a world tragically devoid of both those qualities. As Astrid, Alison Lohman delivers one of the outstanding performances of recent years, a true career breakthrough for this talented actress. She has been asked to do nothing less than carry this entire film - she is never off screen for a moment - and she proves herself more than equal to the task. Her luminous face functions as a sort of beacon, lighting our way through the labyrinth of her character's life. In her every move and gesture, Lohman embodies the hurt and confusion that define the character - yet through it all she allows us to sense the innate goodness and hope for something better that keep the protagonist from becoming just another passive victim of circumstances beyond her control.

The film also does a fine job with the character of Astrid's mother. The screenplay by Mary Agnes Donoghue does not find it necessary to "explain" Ingrid in rationalistic terms. Indeed, Ingrid remains pretty much an enigma from beginning to end. By not spelling out what exactly the demons are that drive this woman - if they are indeed demons at all - the film heightens the sense of moral imbalance so essential to Astrid's story. Astrid can't understand her mother, and neither can we. Is she mentally ill? Is she inherently "evil"? Such questions are never answered - and neither should they be, for answers to such questions would violate the morally ambiguous spirit of the world these characters inhabit. Like the white oleander of the film's title, Ingrid embodies that quality of "deadly beauty" that so often defines the evil we encounter in this life - and against which we seem to have so few defenses.

Director Peter Kosminsky employs a number of impressive techniques to help draw the viewer into the story. By remaining so obsessively focused on the face of Astrid, he allows us to identify fully with all she is going through. He also gives the film an offbeat, otherworldly quality by making such naturalistic elements as the wind, the ocean and the nighttime sky key players in the drama. They provide a strong impressionistic background for the story's action, helping to create a world whose moral terrain is at times very unreal and very disturbing. Thomas Newman's haunting score aids immeasurably in this respect.

If for no other reason, "White Oleander" deserves to be seen for its uniformly outstanding performances. In addition to the brilliant Ms. Lohman, we have Michelle Pfieffer giving what may be the performance of her career in this (for her) atypical portrait of a sinister woman. She makes us feel both disgust and pity for this lost soul who for whatever reason is clearly unable to provide the proper moral guidance for the daughter she so obviously loves. Renee Zellweger brings warmth and just the right touch of vulnerability to her portrait of the foster mother with whom Astrid forges a strong, caring relationship. Cole Hauser is excellent as the handsome older guardian who seduces Astrid and helps to precipitate a family crisis in the process. And Robin Wright Penn and Patrick Fugit round out this nigh unto flawless cast.

If you appreciate movies that have the courage to wander off the beaten path and to map out a course all their own, "White Oleander" should most assuredly fit the bill. And based on her work here, Alison Lohman seems destined for greatness.

The only thing I could start off by saying about this movie is: Remarkable. You find comfort, hope, insecurity, and a whole other mesh of feelings and emotions in this movie. You find Astrid (Alison Lohman, Matchstick Men) who is raised to be against anyone who isn't her mother. But she finds herself in a situation where she must learn to adapt to others, and find out..not everyone is the enemy. She meets a string of new people throughout the new phases of her life. All of which are very different and teach her so much about herself. (All in different ways of course..)

This was definitely Alison Lohman's best performance, and a breakout role for her. Other great performances were that of Renee Zellweger, and Robin Wright Penn.