Too many fans seem to be blown away

Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This is a fine movie, certainly, lit up by some truly great performances.First of all Sally Field's turn as the woman who has to learn how to run a cotton farm in the Depression when everything was stacked against her.Followed by Danny Glover's underwritten performance as Moze, the man who helps her do that.But, despite the fact that it received an Academy Award, I think the problem here, to the extent that it is a problem, is the script. It tries to cover too many stories, rather than developing the other main characters.Nor was I a fan of the directing. Too many atmospheric shots. I would rather have learned more about some of the characters, especially Moze.Still, a good movie, and one that will repay your watching it.

Monster storms, the scourge of the KKK, infidelity, tragic death, and redemption. Who isn't frightened of monster storms? Who doesn't feel rage at the injustice of blind hatred in the form of the KKK? Who fails to feel for a wife whose husband has cheated on her? Or a wife whose husband has died tragically young? And who, seeing all this, isn't uplifted by the redemption of the transgressors (except the Klansmen, I suppose) and the almost literal resurrection of the dead? Or the cleansing of sin through love and forgiveness(faith)? Who would not weep? Unfortunately I was too aware of the easy manipulations taking place on the screen to be really moved, feeling the author's heavy and not so subtle hand at work, grabbing at my emotional heartstrings. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but that's how I experienced it. I could hear the scriptwriter, (Benton) saying, "Okay, NOW, we're gonna get you with a big storm -- look! How scary!" "Oh, and now, the Klan makes and appearance, and you will foam with rage!" Ah, no. Too transparent. Yes, Mrs. Spaulding overcame an inordinate number of obstacles to show the world that the human spirit is indomitable. Yeah. Don't care. The acting was good.

Last night I saw this film again on TV, the second time since its first release 32 years ago. A lot of the scenes I still remember, the most dramatic of all to me is the hurricane. I sighed a few times during the whole film as in the case of Frank's (Balding's son) narrow escape from death running home from school. On the way, he was offered to enter into the car shelter where the homeless woman acted purely out of a kind heart to try to save a little boy. In the end, she was killed by the over-turned car battered by the storm. So contrasting of human nature was depicted in this film, for that I would reserve the top rating for the vile character to the guy called Mr. Simmons, the crooked cotton gin owner, who takes advantage of a poor widow with little or no knowledge of the trade, when she first came to buy seeds from him for her start-up. Fortunately, Mose foiled Simmons' deceit he had hatched up to give Mrs. Balding the wrong seeds deliberately. Mose's alert got Simmons to tender the correct seeds later. The rascal began to bear grudges with Mose from this point onward. Mr. Simmons haggles with Mrs. Balding again when she becomes the cotton grower first to return and sell the produce to the gin. He browbeats her in the cotton price with plenty of excuses, like the big depression, her greed to exact above market price, etc. In the end, Balding wins by striking a touching note at him that Simmons' father was not like him, that his father had a heart to treat kindly and reward the first seller of the crop, when she was about to end the negotiation and leave the room. In the end, the rascal trader backs down and let her have the right price she deserves. The director of the film got Simmons stick to his bad guy character. Approaching the end of the film, Simmons gangs up a group of triple-K clan members to inflict grave bodily harm on Mose, who realized he can no longer stay on helping Mrs. Balding in the next growing season. So, he departed, with yet another touching scene of affections he shows to Mrs. Balding and her children. Mrs. Balding bids him well and let him have the credit for achieving as the first grower to sell the crop in that season. I enjoy this good film as ever.

There's a super sweetness to "Places in the Heart," but it wears it well. The characters all have little failings, but nothing that can't be quickly overcome in the space of a tender, touching moment. Though many scenes walk right up to the line, they stop short of turning that well-earned tenderness into cloying sentimentality.The young, cherub-cheeked widow played by Sally Field is can-do-ism personified, and is perhaps more racially tolerant than the norm for 1930s Texas, especially considering that her husband has just been killed by a drunk, black youth. But the movie sells us on the idea that she has bigger problems to worry about than racial politics or even personal loss. The Depression is palpable throughout the movie, and it reshapes her life almost overnight. A neighbor is living in a car, paint on a nearby abandoned house says "Gone to California," and now, with the death of the family breadwinner, Field's character also appears to be headed for bust. Worse, she may lose custody of her two children. With no time to mourn, she has to take in a surly boarder (John Malkovich, thoroughly believable as the blind WWI veteran) and hire a black man who previously stole from her (Danny Glover) in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. If it seems all too predictable that her headstrong determination and positive spirit will prevail, that her worldly-wise black field hand will prove his worth, and that the bottled-up boarder will grudgingly reveal his sensitive side, well... it wears it well. Perhaps these characters should be thought of in the way that many of us like to think of our grandparents and great-grandparents: a little idealized in our minds, perhaps, but people who we believe were fundamentally good and who lived through difficult and transformative years in our history as soldiers, laborers, school children, and housewives. The final scene in the movie is a creative tracking shot that emphasizes the oneness of this diverse, often fragmented and antagonistic, yet familiar community that we have come to know. It is not just a Texas community, but an American one.It is hard to say what a slow-boiling side plot about marital infidelity, featuring a young and inscrutable Ed Harris, adds to the movie. There may be some thematic connection to a frightening sequence of a literally home-wrecking tornado. Or maybe it is a way to provide additional color by making the supporting characters flawed and allowing the main ones to remain only nominally imperfect. In any case, this B-plot is not very creatively rendered, and it takes time away from the Malkovich and Glover characters whose private lives would surely be far more interesting but are too seldom seen. This shortcoming, though, does not prevent the main plot from being as affirming and moving as it strives to be.