Postcards from the Edge Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		2.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Postcards from the Edge Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 3, 2017

Carrie Fisher's recent death and, prior, work in Star Wars: The Force Awakens sparked a renewed interest in her life and career, a life and career marked by fame and beset with personal problems. Fisher, the daughter of acclaimed Actress Debbie Reynolds, rose to fame in the original Star Wars film and never escaped the Princess Leia persona, even through the widely publicized personal challenges and demons she faced and the books she wrote, including the semi-autobiographical Postcards from the Edge. That book, first published in 1987, was adapted for the screen for 1990 release by Fisher herself, directed by Mike Nichols (The Birdcage), and starred the venerable Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins) as the Fisher character Suzanne Vale. Shirley MacLaine (Terms of Endearment) played opposite Streep as the Suzanne's mother, Doris Mann.

Suzanne Vale is a young Hollywood actress whose personal problems in life have negatively affected her performance on the set. Her director (Gene Hackman) has had enough. But she hasn't. One day, she awakens in the hospital, her stomach having been pumped following a night of drugs, booze, and sex with a man (Dennis Quaid) whom she barely knows and who, upon finding her practically comatose, quickly but urgently dumped her at the hospital's front entrance. She enters rehab with her mother Doris' support and, per her insurance company's demands, lives with a responsible adult, i.e. her mother, for the duration of her rehabilitation. As she works to mend her ways, she struggles through performing in a subpar picture.

Postcards from the Edge is a slyly purposeful movie, a life-and-times tale of a troubled actress who finds difficulty in maintaining a professional balance through the vices in her private life and, more, the inner turmoil that sparks her outward downfalls. The film isn't about a single pitfall or trap or relationship. It's a broad, telling story of self-made difficulty and the equally challenging climb back out of the hole. It's certainly not preachy. It doesn't praise or condemn. It's honest, raw where necessary, moving when it need be, unafraid of facing challenge and bringing the audience closer to the characters' souls. The audience goes on the journey with Suzanne, feels part of it rather than simply witnessing it from afar. The material finds a healthy balance that allows an outpouring of soulful emotion while maintaining a linear narrative progression. Characters feel full and fleshed with key moments supported by humor as necessary. The film approaches the material without burden or ease, finding a satisfying middle ground of purpose and approachability that does its tale, and its real-life counterparts, justice.

The movie is smartly cast, too. It's impossible to go wrong with Oscar winners Meryl Strep and Shirley MacLaine in the leads in practically any film, but they fill these particular roles with a necessary candor and an agreeable subtlety, not to mention an obvious mother-daughter chemistry that shines in one of the film's key scenes near its end. Both bring incredible honesty to the parts, emotionally to be sure as they explore their personal vices, their relationship with one another, and together and individually as they attempt to traverse life's, fame's, and Hollywood's own, minefields. The film boasts several fine performances from a number of familiar faces in key roles: Suzanne's love interest (Dennis Quaid), Suzanne's overbearing director (Gene Hackman), Suzanne's doctor (Richard Dreyfuss), and Suzanne's on-set friend (Annette Bening).

Though more tangential to the core plot and more fun than the film's otherwise fairly serious (but still tonally evenly delivered) character drama are the many scenes on-set where Suzanne is working on her picture. It's always interesting to see a movie turn the cameras around and essentially "shoot the shoot," to take audiences behind-the-scenes not in a special feature but rather make a movie set integral to the movie itself. Postcards from the Edge does it as well as most any other, exploring on-set relationships, exposing a few little tricks of the trade, and having fun with some of the backstage details that support the movie's core story but also introduce a little bit of fun at the same time (the movie opens with what is, essentially, gag reel-worthy material). Watch for Filmmaker Rob Reiner to pop in.

Postcards from the Edge Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Postcards from the Edge arrives on Blu-ray with a watchable, passable, but not at all memorable 1080p transfer. It's beset by various little issues. Grain distribution appears wildly uneven. The image often transitions from super-smooth and plastic-like to presenting with a somewhat snowy, clumpy grain presence. Black levels push too pale. Print wear in the form of various pops and speckles is commonplace, but not rampant. Contrast seems slightly funky. A general processed, noisy look accompanies parts of the film. Colors aren't particularly exciting. The palette is varied and appropriately bold, but it lacks nuance and fullness. Contrast could be dialed in tighter. Flesh tones are fairly pasty. But the movie does benefit from the increased resolution 1080p provides, even if detailing is never stellar. Facial features can't find any real intimacy. Ditto clothes. Various props and environmental bits showcase enough textural muscle to satisfy base format requirements, but the Blu-ray never really amounts to much more than a sharper, crisper DVD.

Postcards from the Edge Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Postcards from the Edge features an LPCM 2.0 soundtrack which actually generates a fair bit of width across the stage's front side. There's a nice sense of wide space and aggressive chop to a helicopter heard near film's start. Music is satisfyingly wide, too. Clarity is certainly not up to par with the best tracks, lacking instrumental nuance, but the track's basic sonic shape comes through well enough. Atmospheric effects chime in to help set various scenes. There's perhaps a mild unbalance to some of them: for example, background din at a party in chapter three is nicely diffuse and wide, but nighttime insects heard in the same scene sound a little too nearby and overpowered. Dialogue delivery is fine, settling into a middle-imaged location. There are times when sync appears slightly off, but it's not a persistent issue.

Postcards from the Edge Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Postcards from the Edge contains a single supplement, an audio commentary track with Carrie Fisher. She delivers her candid back story, the process of writing the film, the process of getting the film off the ground and made, her involvement in the shoot, the cast, anecdotes from the filmmaking process, the role drugs played in her life, and much more. This is a good, sincere, from-the-heart track that listeners will find abundantly fascinating.

Postcards from the Edge Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Postcards from the Edge finds a nice balance between zippy fun and serious character drama. Certainly the film plays in something of a different light considering Fisher's recent death, but it holds up well even a quarter-of-a-century later thanks to solid fundamentals and quality performances. Mill Creek's Blu-ray presents the film in a rather disappointing fashion. Video is chunky and uneven, audio is bland but passable, and supplements are limited to a Fisher commentary. Recommended on the strength of the film.