Tri-Star Pictures, written and directed by Robert Benton; rated PG
Places in the Heart is one of the few films that violates the separation of church and cinema. Opening titles roll to a rousing rendition of “Blessed Assurance” that might well have been lifted from a Billy Graham crusade. The first scene shows a family praying before dinner. One wonders: What is going on here?
It’s business as usual, at least for a while. Within five minutes the husband is shot and killed by a drunken black youth who is then lynched by the outraged citizenry. (The scene is rural Texas in the thirties. Later, the Klan makes a mandatory cameo appearance.) This is straight out of Bonnie and Clyde, one of director/writer Robert Benton’s previous films. Attention then shifts to the widow, Edna Spalding, played by Sally Field.
Edna must now face a predatory bank manager (who is also a deacon in the church), the Depression, an untended farm, a weak cotton market, and dangerous Texas weather effectively depicted in frightening tornado scenes. Along with all this, she must raise her two children, Frank and Possum (a girl), who between them steal many scenes. She hires Moze, a wandering black man, to help with the cotton. Will they be able to get the crop in? Will they all survive? These were the struggles of many in those days, and most viewers will care what happens. I did.
To help with finances, the plucky Edna takes in Mr. Will, a blind boarder with a demented look but a heart of gold. Strangely, there is no romantic interest between these two. That all takes place with another couple in the town and amounts to a separate story line, not a subplot. Even so, it involves an engaging (and rare) treatment of forgiveness.
This is a visually beautiful film. Nestor Almendros’s careful cinematography exudes a lush realism: plows unzipping the earth, hands picking cotton, ominous clouds gathering. However, Benton violates this realism with a surprise ending borrowed from another film genre that will truly surprise, or even astonish. Whatever the reaction, one leaves the theater thinking.
What Places in the Heart represents is Benton’s return to his roots. It is as much about a town and a time as it is about people. But this effort, even if patchy and flawed, is to be applauded. Too many of those from rural America who have “made it” consider themselves to have “grown” into a state where such things as religion are beyond mention except as something that was settled, negatively, in the past. Benton appears to recognize, as Chesterton did, that America is a nation with the soul of a church.
The religious dimension could have been deeper here; indeed, that would have helped the story. But there is an honest effort to stretch the medium to include this vital part of life. The role that religion plays in this film is for the most part positive. That, at least, is something, and Places in the Heart is a most unconventional movie and worthy of being seen.
Reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a screenwriter and novelist living in Southern California.
