Powerful humanitarian film in a challenging time

Rating: 9/10 (12 May 2009)

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) comes from a sharecropper's family in Oklahoma. He's done time for being in a fight where his opponent dies. He returns to the farm in the Dust Bowl era only to find everyone packed up and gone, part of a mass migration to California where supposedly plenty of farm jobs exist for them. Tom catches up with his family before the authorities come to demolish the home where they're staying[1] and about ten of them head west in a big ol' beat up truck that reminds you of the Beverly Hillbillies.
The story is how human beings, when faced with natural disaster and social structures that systematically destroy their ability to earn a living, press on with dignity and hope. (Hmmm, seems applicable to the world of our Wall-Street takeover, eh?) Indeed, I see the movie (and book) as one long song to the indomitability of the human spirit. No, these aren't Randian nonfamilial, hyperindividualistic characters seeking to achieve prodigious engineering feats against all odds. Instead, they're about family, indeed, Wrath is the ultimate family-value movie... the ultimate family value being survival.
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Brian Wright Copyright 2009