Diane Keaton, Shoot the Moon

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

David Denby

“Unlike the self-improving seventies couple in Kramer vs. Kramer, the husband and wife in Shoot the Moon are thoroughly defined by their situation: they could no more pick themselves up and change into new people than a transplanted oak could begin to sprout birch leaves. Their problems are fought out, not "worked out" in the modern way. . . . Having reached her middle thirties, Faith Dunlap (Diane Keaton) is developing a few lines about her eyes and mouth, and her skin looks a little raw. A beautiful California woman, she's slightly frayed around the edges and perhaps a mite stupefied from housework….

“In Reds, Diane Keaton spent a good deal of time uneasily searching for a coherent character to play, but she's perfectly relaxed and self-assured here. Her Faith has married young and relied too much on her husband. His leaving her is a real betrayal, and it knocks her flat. Physically exhausted, Keaton sprawls in bed as the kids play around her, and, in a classic bit, haltingly sings the Beatles' "If I Fell" while lying in the tub, her voice cracking, tears falling. Keaton has always found it easy enough to bring out the anger that lies beneath the soft hesitancy of her surface manner, but she's never dug down and found this much pain before. And she's touchingly awkward when Faith, getting back at George, begins an affair with the swash-buckling young worker (Peter Weller) who shows up to build her tennis court….

“The movie is a beautiful achievement, and yet, at a recent preview, a fair number of women hissed at the end. My guess is that . . . [LO for context?] they're appalled at the mere possibility that Diane Keaton might take [Albert Finney's character] back. But Faith Dunlap is not the kind of woman who sails cleanly out of a bad marriage into the high seas of career and independence. In any case, it's an awful mistake to ask works of art to corroborate our own lives or to show us what we want to see. By staying close to the truth of two particular characters, Shoot the Moon, in its own way, keeps the faith.”

David Denby
New York, January 25, 1982

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