Native Texan Robert Benton has a rather interesting career as a director, one that is filled with many noteworthy films and quite a few Academy Award nominations. He began his Hollywood career as a writer, co-authoring the award-winning script for the Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway film Bonnie and Clyde. His work includes the 1978 film: Superman: The Movie; Kramer vs. Kramer, which he also directed; Billy Bathgate; Paul Newman’s Nobody’s Fool; and the screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc? In a career that spanned four decades, Robert Benton proved to be a consistent and competent professional behind the camera. For that, he was awarded three Academy Awards during his career, including one for the script for Places in the Heart, a Southern film about perseverance and forgiveness; a film about a widowed woman, two children, a black drifter, and a blind WWI veteran who manage to save a small Southern farm from foreclosure during the Great Depression. It sounds farcical, but it is anything but.
Sally Field is playing Edna Spalding, a woman living with her husband and two young children on a plot of land during the Great Depression in 1935’s Texas. One morning, her husband, Sheriff Royce Spalding, goes to investigate gunshots out at the rail yards and finds a young, drunk Black man firing his gun in the air. The gun clicks on an empty cylinder, so he assumes it is empty and points it lackadaisically at the Sheriff and pulls the trigger. It fires and hits Royce in the abdomen, causing him to bleed out. Without her husband’s income coming in, Edna has to face reality: the mortgage will eventually come due, and their savings will not cover it. Her sister cannot afford to take them in, nor does she have the room. The situation is bleak, and she’s not sure what she can do about it.
One evening, a drifter named Moses “Moze” Hadner (Danny Glover), a Black man, shows up at her door offering to work for room and board. Knowing she cannot afford that, she offers to feed him and send him on his way. He steals some silver from her before leaving, but is caught and brought back by the police. Instead of turning him in, she lies and says he is working for her. Grateful, Moze has an idea that just might save the farm: even though cotton prices are dropping because of the Depression, they just might make enough from planting and harvesting it to cover the mortgage payments.
On top of that, the local banker, Albert Denby (Lane Smith), shows up at her door with his brother-in-law, Mr. Will (John Malkovich), who was blinded in the Great War. Denby pawns Mr. Will off on her as a paying lodger as a way to assist her in her money troubles. Mr. Will doesn’t want to be there any more than Edna wants him there, but the two will eventually come to a mutual understanding and even a bit of friendship. As harvest time comes for the cotton, it becomes apparent that there may not be enough money made to cover the outstanding mortgage and it will take a miracle, or some quick thinking, to save the farm and keep their home.
Interspersed into this straightforward narrative is a B-plot involving Edna’s sister, Margaret (Lindsay Crouse), and her husband, Wayne Lomax (Ed Harris). In this part of the story, we follow Wayne as he is having an extramarital affair with schoolteacher, Viola Kelsey (Amy Madigan). After a tornado nearly destroys the town, Viola demands that she and her husband move away, and Wayne admits to Margaret about the affair. This plot really only serves two purposes: It pads the runtime and it somewhat ties in to the central themes of equality, grace, and forgiveness, all tenets of Christianity. This is further cemented in the finale during a fantasy sequence where the living and the dead are all in attendance at a sacramental service, and Margaret takes Wayne’s hand, extending the hand of forgiveness.
This moment in the film is the only surrealistic moment of an otherwise straightforward narrative. It starts out subtly, too. We see that the church is sparsely attended for this service, and the minister is reading from 1 Corinthians 13. As we pan from person to person, each one taking a single cup of the sacramental wine, we suddenly realize that some of these people have died in the course of the film. The last two individuals to take the sacrament are Royce Spalding and the Black teenager who unintentionally killed him. There is something fundamentally Christian about the man who was killed offering the sacramental wine to the one who killed him.
Because this is a film set in the Jim Crow South, there are going to be moments of racism on display. Moze is looked at with disdain from the men selling Edna her cotton seed, especially when Moze points out that they are trying to cheat her out of the good seed she paid for. When she is later negotiating the sale of the cotton, even though she knows nothing about negotiating the price, Moze is forced to stay outside the office, peeking in through a window, giving her signals to help her navigate a difficult negotiation. Later, a group of townsfolk come in the night, dressed in their Klan’s robes and beat him severely, forcing him to leave the farm lest further acts of violence come upon Edna, Mr. Will, or the kids.
And the violence isn’t entirely directed at Moze, either. The opening scene when Royce is killed shows us the level of Texas justice at the time. The townsmen reverently carry Royce in to his home, still alive but barely, and set him on the table so that he can be tended to as he dies. Meanwhile, a vehicle is dragging the lifeless body of the drunken Black teenager behind it. This young boy will later be strung up from a tree, cut down by a group of Black men who silently approach this sad scene like this is just another day for them.
Sally Field won her second Oscar for this film. This was the film where she got so excited at the Awards show that she uttered the memorable, often misquoted, line “I can’t deny the fact that you like me—right now, you like me.” It’s often made fun of and misspoken as “You like me—you really like me!” This has become so iconic that I was certain I had seen a clip of her saying just that. Watching her acceptance speech, it is cheesy and overly emotional, but it is so Sally Field.
Places in the Heart is a wonderfully made film that nails the feel of the southern states at a time when racial tensions were still running high, even for people who outwardly opposed such thinking. When Moze first shows up at Edna’s door, she is visibly afraid of him. He is a tall, Black man, and she is a widowed woman with no man there to protect her. She cannot help but feel apprehensive. She takes a gamble when lying for him over the stolen silver. Moze is a smart man, and he also has a good heart. Instead of just leaving after being told he cannot stay, he sees she needs firewood and spends the following morning chopping it for her. He also is willing to risk his life when the tornado is practically upon them, running out of the safety of the storm cellar to rescue Edna’s son, who has left school to run home in the storm. We see Moze in the congregation during the sacrament long after he has left town because of the KKK, too, offered the sacrament by a White man.
This is not a perfect film; so few are. It spends too much time on the side story between Wayne and Margaret, and the sudden appearance of the KKK isn’t built up well enough. Still, it has a good, solid story that is uplifting even as it ends on a more contemplative finale. John Malkovich is good in one of his earliest roles, as is Danny Glover. This was, however, the year of Amadeus, and a little drama about forgiveness wasn’t going to unseat that film from the top spot. Still, it is worth checking this one out as a film that will hit you emotionally and make you think a little, too.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Arlene Donovan
Best Director: Robert Benton
Best Actress: Sally Field (won)
Best Supporting Actor: John Malkovich
Best Supporting Actress: Lindsay Crouse
Best Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen: Robert Benton (won)
Best Costume Design: Ann Roth
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Release Date: September 21, 1984
Running Time: 111 Minutes
Rated PG
Starring: Sally Field, Lindsay Crouse, Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, John Malkovich, and Danny Glover
Directed By: Robert Benton
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