The Contenders:
Vanessa Redgrave: The Bostonians
Jessica Lange: Country
Judy Davis: A Passage to India
Sally Field: Places in the Heart (winner)
Sissy Spacek: The River
Showing posts with label Places in the Heart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Places in the Heart. Show all posts
Friday, February 1, 2019
Friday, November 17, 2017
Monday, January 9, 2017
Friday, July 15, 2016
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Down on the Farm
Film: Places in the Heart
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.
Format: Movies! Channel on rockin’ flatscreen.
For the past few months, I’ve been sitting with a single Best Picture nominee in the 1980s that I hadn’t watched. That movie was Places in the Heart, which I’ve had recorded on the DVR for a month or two. Today I finally decided to sit down and watch it, if only to have completed a particular decade of a particular award. It would feel something like an accomplishment if nothing else. Admittedly, the title didn’t fill me with a great deal of hope. I was expecting something along the lines of Crimes of the Heart, which I found dreadful.
It turns out that the worst part of Places in the Heart is the wretched title, which seems to have very little to do with the story that we’re given. The film takes place in Waxahachie, TX right in the heart of the Great Depression. People are out of work, losing their farms and houses, and the town is filled with drifters desperate for a day’s work or a meal. The Spaldings are relatively prosperous. Their house sits on 30 acres of good land and Royce Spalding (Ray Baker) is the sheriff. One night as the family sits down to dinner, Royce is called out on a drunk-and-disorderly and discovers a young black man named Wylie (De’voreaux White) firing off a pistol. An errant shot takes the sheriff in the chest, which leads the townspeople to retaliate with a lynching.
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