Taglines: A story about the memories that haunt us, and the truth that sets us free.
The Prince of Tides movie storyline. The Wingo family is from South Carolina, they growing up in a house on a tidal plain. The oldest offspring, Lucas, largely acted as the protector for his younger twins siblings, Tom and Savannah, in light of their dysfunctional growing up, with their shrimper father, Henry, distant and abusive if/when he did pay them any attention, and their mother, Lila, while not doting on them most concerned about appearances and striving for social standing.
Now in middle age, Savannah is a New York based poet, Tom, still living on the South Carolina coast outside of Charleston with his wife Sally and their own three doting daughters, taking a break from his high school teaching/football coaching job, while Lucas has long since died while still standing up for himself and his beliefs. Lila, divorced and now remarried with that wealth and social standing she so long desired, receives news that Savannah is in the hospital following her most recent suicide attempt.
The Prince of Tides is a 1991 American romantic drama film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Pat Conroy; the film stars Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte. It tells the story of the narrator’s struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his dysfunctional childhood in South Carolina. Streisand directed and produced the film in addition to starring in it. Conroy and Becky Johnston adapted the screenplay. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, but lost the award to The Silence of the Lambs.
Film Review for The Prince of Tides
By directing one good film, you prove that you had a movie inside of you. By directing two, you prove you are a real director, and that is what Barbra Streisand proves with “The Prince of Tides,” an assured and very serious love story that allows neither humor nor romance to get in the way of its deeper and darker subject.
The film stars Nick Nolte, in an Oscar-caliber performance, as an unemployed, aimless and miserably married football coach from the South, who ventures north into New York City after his twin sister, a poet, tries to commit suicide. This is not her first attempt, and as we learn more about the Nolte character, we begin to understand why he has special reason to care for her. They were both subjected to an unforgivable childhood.
In New York, Nolte meets his sister’s psychiatrist (Streisand), who is also not happily married, and their conversations turn from the therapeutic to the personal, as both characters begin to sense that the other is lonely and cut off from ordinary human cheer. We are familiar with the general profile of such relationships from many other movies, but “The Prince of Tides” is not about anything so banal as the ways that opposites attract. It is about two people whose affection offers a cure for each other – if they have the courage.
Streisand has a son (Jason Gould) who is clumsy at sports, and Nolte agrees to throw a football around with him, getting to like the kid in the process. Streisand also has a husband (Jeroen Krabbe) who is a famous violinist and cruel snob, who gets one-upped by Nolte in a scene so funny and impeccably written that it is a crime, a violent crime against the cinema, that the surprise is spoiled in the movie’s trailers and publicity clips.
Nolte was once happily married to Blythe Danner, but there is no more love in their marriage, maybe because of the pains he feels deep inside. There is a distance between himself and his children. He loves his sister (Melinda Dillon), but feels powerless to help her.
His emotional life still centers around his mother (Kate Nelligan, playing both young and old, in her second great supporting performance in 1991, after “Frankie and Johnnie”). She was once dirt poor, married to a violent alcoholic who abused her and her children. Then she traded up to a local rich man whose cruelty was more refined. Her son hates her, but cannot free himself of her.
“The Prince of Tides” is based on a novel by Pat Conroy, who also wrote The Lords of Discipline, another novel in which the lives of young men are scarred by the weaknesses of their elders. This time, though, the movie is not quite so simple. These are complicated people who have lived difficult lives, and a quick romance or some feelgood therapy is not going to heal their wounds. What Streisand establishes, with admirable patience as both a director and a writer here, is that the people can heal best by learning to build and trust relationships.
The movie is not all grimness and pain, of course. A dinner party scene provides a big liberating laugh, and the chemistry between Nolte and Streisand – such different people – is exciting because their minds, as well as their bodies, touch and are soothed. In “Yentl” and again here, Streisand shows herself as a director who likes emotional stories – but doesn’t simplify them, and pays attention to the human quirks and strangeness of her characters.
The Prince of Tides (1991)
Directed by: Barbra Streisand
Starring: Barbra Streisand, Nick Nolte, Blythe Danner, Kate Nelligan, Jeroen Krabbé, Melinda Dillon, George Carlin, Jason Gould, Maggie Collier, Lindsay Wray
Screenplay by: Pat Conroy, Becky Johnston
Production Design by: Paul Sylbert
Cinematography by: Stephen Goldblatt
Film Editing by: Don Zimmerman
Costume Design by: Ruth Morley
Set Decoration by: Caryl Heller, Arthur Howe Jr., Leslie A. Pope
Art Direction by: W. Steven Graham
Music by: James Newton Howard
MPAA Rating: R for a scene of sex-related violence and for strong language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: December 25, 1991
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