A film buff can't help but admire Hal Ashby's direction, Haskell Wexler's cinematography, and David Carradine as star — the latter having beat out many high-profile actors for the role, including Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, and even Robert Dylan.
It's a work that shows what Depression times really were like —at least for Okies— as opposed to today's proclaimed woes, where not getting enough cheese on your pizza is viewed as penury.
But as is often the case, it's a Hollywood Version of actuality, making Guthrie seem irritatingly noble, albeit self-destructive in his behavior.
In actuality, Guthrie was a pedictable liberal/radical/collectivist and naif who followed the Party Line and wrote weekly columns for The Daily Worker.
Initially Guthrie helped write and sing what the Almanacs Singers termed "peace" songs; while the Nazi-Soviet Pact was in effect, until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Communist line was that WWII was a capitalist fraud. After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union the topics of their songs became anti-fascist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie
Anyhow, it's a fine film, so long as you don't confuse it with reality.
