In today's climate of dwindling resources and increasing environmental awareness, it's not insignificantly a film about water rights, about a community finding itself with a few assists from nature, whether in the form of a beanfield maintained by a stubborn holdout (Chick Vennera) against developers' bulldozers, or a timely gust of wind that circulates sequestered copies of a muckraking newspaper whose entire press run is about to be put to the torch. It's a celebration of activism raised to self-empowerment. Although guns are drawn, and in a few instances actually fired, this isn't a body-count film.
Perhaps more to the point was that critics and the public at the time were a bit derriere-garde in their grasp of how a flattened indigenous subculture, instead of being dispossessed and dispersed once and for all, regenerates itself in a beanfield, replenished by the natural world, defeating its would-be despoilers. Nobody at the time thought to refer to Redford's dip into contemporary folklore, magic realism, quirky characters and simpatico rapport with pre-Anglo culture as avant-garde. Three, if you count Robert Redford, who produced and directed it and, most importantly, adroitly balanced its tricky elements to fashion it into a endearing and enduring - populist fable.
Share The Milagro Beanfield War (1988) begins with one angel dancing out of a sunrise and two angels dancing into a sunset.
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