Places in the Heart

Places in the Heart (Robert Benton, 1984) Robert Benton's distillation of life growing up in Waxahachie, Texas during the Depression begins with an unfortunate accidental death, which expands to an unfortunate deliberate act of evil, but ends, after Earthly trials—from both Man and Nature—with an ambiguous epiphany that extends the simple gift of community into a surprising, almost shocking, expression of spiritual healing and harmony--one of the gutsiest segues from hard-scrabble reality to the Mystery of Faith ever put to film.

The cast is impeccable with unsentimental work from Sally Field, to pitch-perfect early performances from Danny Glover and John Malkovich, to excellent work by Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Lindsay Crouse. All portray an extended family that forgo the boundaries of blood and race to pull together and survive the deprivations of Nature and man. It's a movie that doesn't shy away from showing people at their worst and quietly displaying them at their best.

Sure sounds like heavy stuff, but the artists behind and in front of the camera make it compelling drama that stays clear-eyed and rarely sinks into easy sentimentality. Quite the opposite, actually; Glover plays the role of a poor share-cropper with a tentativeness that awaits disaster, and Malkovich makes his blind war vet a petulant jerk. Plus, there's a collection of townsfolk that includes greedy bankers, murderous racists and opportunists of every stripe. In To Kill a Mockingbird, racism seems like bad manners and poor up-bringing, while in Places in the Heart it's a way of life and charity is the exception, rather than the norm.

For the Spalding Family, it's a story of tragedy and accommodating, changing and "making do" when they lose their stability in the community and become charity outcasts, banding together with other unfortunates to, as in the parlance, "pull yourself up by your boot-straps" and discovering along the way that charity is something you give in equal measures to accepting. Something about the quality of mercy being twice blessed (now, where have I heard that before?). It's a story of perseverance in the face of great change, and, if not welcoming and embracing change, at least having the grit to roll with it. It's one of my favorite films from a fine, often disregarded film director.

And that ending. It comes out of nowhere, punches you in the ventricles, and leaves you with a final image that is, at first, shocking and confounding, but, as it sinks in, moves beyond the factual to the spiritual and embraces time and memory and the broader outreaches of community—beyond mere property lines and borders and extends to the heart...and the soul. 

Gets me every time.