Synopsis
Places in the Heart (1984) is a Depression-era drama you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Robert Benton from memories of his own Texas childhood. When her husband is killed, young widow Edna Spaulding is left with two children, a failing farm, and a bank note she cannot pay. Sally Field plays Edna; John Malkovich is the blind boarder who takes a room; Danny Glover is Moze, a drifter Edna catches stealing who ends up teaching her how to plant and harvest cotton.
The obstacles pile up without sentimentality — a tornado, a debt collector, the Ku Klux Klan active in the county. Benton weaves a second storyline alongside Edna's: her sister Margaret and Margaret's husband are quietly falling apart, and the film holds both threads until they collide in a final scene that lands like nothing else in the movie.
Field took home her second Oscar in five years for this performance, and Benton's screenplay claimed the original script prize at the same ceremony. The film earns its ending — it doesn't soften what the Depression cost people, but it insists those people still existed in the same frames as grace and stubbornness. Stream Places in the Heart (1984) online on iFILM.
Starring
Comments 0