Our exposure to the Southern States has been confined to battlefield tours and a “just passin’ through” glimpse of the landscape through the windshield of a rental car or, at best, a grits and cornbread luncheon with locals discovered at a crowded roadside diner.
That said, we’ve always enjoyed our time in the South as well as stories with a Southern theme, such as this week’s ScreenShots pick: “Places In The Heart.”
Set during the Great Depression in Texas, the 1984 film tracks the life of Edna Spalding, a young mother forced to take the helm of her farm and family after the shooting death of her Sheriff husband.
Edna (Sally Field) is backed by a supporting cast including Ed Harris, Lindsay Crouse, Ray Baker, Amy Madigan, Danny Glover, John Malkovich, Terry O’Quinn and Jerry Haynes – all of whom come together to paint a vivid picture of life and times in a small American town during a period when everyone has nothing and the Dust Bowl is claiming farms throughout the Southwest.
Their lives play out in a town called Waxahachie. It’s 1935 and the prejudices that existed in that time are drawn into focus when Edna’s husband Royce is called on to stop a happily drunk black teenager, Wylie, firing a pistol in the town rail yard. Wylie’s gun clicks on an empty chamber and he turns to address the Sheriff, thinking the gun is empty but loosing a shot that strikes Royce, killing him.
Vengeful townsmen return Royce’s body to his widow, Edna, and their children, Frank and Possum – a truckload of vigilantes dragging Wylie’s battered body behind them. Later, Wylie’s relatives take his body down from where it was left hanging in a tree and both men are buried in different graveyards on the same day.
On her own, with bills to pay and mouths to feed, Edna turns to her sister, Margaret, who helps with funeral expenses but doesn’t have the money for much more. A transient handyman named Moses “Moze” Hadner (Glover) appears at her door the night of the funeral, asking for work. Moze offers to plant cotton on her 30 acres, citing his experience as a sharecropper and offering to share in any profits but Edna, unmoved, feeds him and sends him on his way. The next morning, she finds him chopping wood in her yard and makes him breakfast, Moze seizing the opportunity to steal some silver spoons.
Deputies stop Moze and find the spoons, bringing him back to the Spalding farm for adjudication. With Moze’s fate hanging in the balance Edna says she has hired him and gave him permission to take the spoons. We learn that the bank holds the note on the family farm, and the price of cotton – its only crop – is plummeting. The local banker, Albert Denby (Lane Smith), insists she needs to sell the farm to make good on the note and, peeved that she is taking the advice of a black man and refuses to sell to him, forces her to take his war-blinded brother-in-law, Will (Malkovich), as a paid lodger.
We’ll leave the rest of the yarn to you, small characters with big problems dropping in and out, the pacing of life in a small town beating time for the way things play out, so slow you can almost feel the heat coming off the fields and hear the buzz of the “dog-day” cicadas.
Places in the Heart was released in 1984 to critical and commercial success. Reviewers praised its screenplay, direction and performances of the cast (particularly Field, Malkovich and Crouse), with the film grossing $34.9 million against a $9.5 million budget. It garnered seven nominations at the 57th Academy Awards including Best Picture and won two: Best Actress (for Field), and Best Original Screenplay.
We liked the ending, which some have criticized as overly religious, but which we thought wrapped in neatly with portrayal of life in a small Texas town.
The movie is currently streaming on most services.
