Strong and Moving!

good back-story, and good acting

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is a wonderful mini-series that shows the less glamorous, but realistic side of the settling of the American Frontier. The story has an excellent cast including Hal Holbrook, Elizabeth Montgomery, William H. Macy and others. The characters grow and change as the frontier changes and gets settled. It is unfortunate that this mini-series did not get the press that some others have and has not been repeated often enough. This series is just as good as Roots but recounts a different period of American life.I would love to see it on DVD, if you would too please vote at http://www.tvshowsondvd.com. Currently, it only has 132 votes. Studio execs do look at this site to see who would like to buy television shows.

The Awakening Land is one of the best mini-series I have ever seen. I well remember when this first came out on TV. I called in sick to work in order to finish watching it. Elizabeth Montgomery did a marvelous job, and I can't believe it hasn't been made available commercially. If you have any interest at all in how the pioneers handled the settling of new territory, this is an absolute must. It reminded me a bit of 'How the West Was Won' in scope, although it doesn't cover as many generations. Hal Holbrook gave a great performance too. I have always admired the courage of the early pioneers and the hard lives they led. The Awakening Land is a great showcase of this courage and how these pioneers handled the tough circumstances under which they lived.

Based on Conrad Richter's ambitions trilogy, The Awakening Land is one of the finest TV mini-series ever produced for American television. Set in the Ohio frontier ca. 1790-1820, we see an American community form in the wilderness though the life of Sayward Luckett, a poor, uneducated pioneer woman blessed with great gifts of intelligence and courage. Through her often troubled marriage with Portious Wheeler, an eccentric and ambition New Englander, we see the clash and melding of the receding frontier with advancing "modern" civilization. Elizabeth Montgomery's portrayal of Sayward, a woman simultaneously simple but resourceful and intelligent, is surely the highlight of her rather underrated acting career.The production has been treated shabbily by its owners since its premier in 1978. After years of silence, it was finally re-run in the early 1990s (I suspect owing to the fame of "Medicine Woman" Jane Seymour, who has a supporting role as Sayward's younger sister in "The Awakening Land") but I don't believe it was ever available to consumers on VHS. If it appeared on DVD I would snap it up in a minute.Filmed in and around Springfield, Illinois, and the nearby reconstructed frontier village of New Salem, the mini-series is also notable for its setting in a time and place in American history rarely seen in movies or TV: the frontier period in the Midwest. One suspects the production aspired to be another "Roots," but even though it didn't match that show's rating, "The Awakening Land" excelled it in emotional sophistication and often in historical accuracy.

A story line that not only inspires, but informs and educates, this mini-series exemplifies a woman who the world views as with not much to offer, but in reality has "everything" "they" do not. A woman with a vision that others do not see, with the intelligence to work it through, the faith to see it through, and the endurance and long-suffering to weather it through can say nothing but "all things are possible to them that believe!" Excellent acting on the part of both Elizabeth Montgomery and Hal Holbrook. Let's one see that most of life lies under the surface, not in what is normally seen. Illustrates there are often life principles at work that we are usually unaware of, and that if we can learn to see and work with them, astounding results can happen.