Our feature “A River Runs Through It” won an Oscar for best cinematography, because of its loving cinematic caress of western Montana. The mountains around Missoula (filmed mostly near Bozeman) seem idyllic and glorious, filled with wonder, hope, and, of course, fish.

Which is a bit of a conundrum to those of us from Washington, Idaho, and Alberta - we all know Montana (and love it in different ways) - and to many of us its neither magical or unusual. For example, those of us lucky enough to live near the Rocky Mountains have all experienced a cold mountain river to various degrees sometime in our lives.

So Montana is again, like it was in Bus Stop, Rawhide, The Revenant, Brokeback Mountain, etc., a fantastical land full of simple pleasures. Even the duplicitous Russian doctor in “The Hunt for Red October” refers wistfully to the “open skies of Montana”, in the same way we inland westerners might pine for Hawaii or Disneyland or Shangri-La.

For people from Chicago or New York or Paris, I’m sure Montana is a mysterious and wondrous natural land - but for us locals, it’s a bit harder to appreciate the landscape many of us can see out our kitchen window.

So we’re asking SNC viewers to try to enjoy the scenery (and great performances) of “A River Runs Through It” like a City Slicker - and not just looking for the particular mountain road we once drove.

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