Lambie Reviews Our Town

Year: 1940
Accolades: Nominated for a Bunch of Oscars.
Review on Letterboxd: 'Our Town' Review By Avalanche

This is a film that charts how a small, fictional town changes by following a few of its inhabitants over the years. It's based on a successful stage play, which initially rang alarm bells in my head. Typically, films based on plays that I have seen don't seem to work for me because the pacing of the original two acts is at odds with the pacing of a film.

Here, even more of the story's stage-based roots are apparent, going so far as to keep the narrator on screen who breaks the fourth wall and addresses us, the audience, directly. As a film, it shouldn't work. And yet it does. The narrator casually refers to everyone in the town by name, and we quickly get the sense that he is one of the town's inhabitants and that he knows what he's talking about. Even by referring to people we never meet, the town is given that sense of community and life that the film needs in order to make this approach work.

The town itself begins to feel like a character, and the little stories and moments that occur either on screen or off screen and mentioned by the narrator add to the depth and charm of it all. Eventually, the film starts to follow our two main characters, George and Emily, but at the same time it keeps tabs on other key inhabitants and so it never really feels like we're getting bogged down in one place too long.

That's not to say that all this works all the time, because there are a few places where it does all fall down. There is one sequence in which a character, at the request of the narrator, answers questions from the audience. We here a voice shout out some questions, and we get a couple of answers, but the sequence breaks the fourth wall too much, and the whole thing ends up feeling out of place. (I'm not sure it would even work properly on stage, given it's the only bit of interaction the audience has.)

The story of our two main characters also feels a bit simplistic after a point. The first half of their tale is rather sweet, but the second half doesn't carry that same emotion, and one of the final sequences involving Emily feels like it drags on far too long in order to make its point.

In the end, I found myself liking the unconventional, direct narration and the little snippets of the goings-on of the townsfolk more than the linear, main character focused parts of the film. I liked seeing how things changed in the town over time, and perhaps also how some things don't change. I suppose that's the point of the story, in the end: to tell the tale of the town by telling the tales of it's people.