Places in the Heart

Nestor Almendros was a cinematographer with a talent like a mad scientist's: He helped us to travel back in time. He could reproduce the old-time photograph look (as in Truffaut's "The Wild Child"), or he could put us within a 360 degree reality (as in "Days of Heaven"). In writer/director Robert Benton's "Places in the Heart," he does a bit of both: He shoots this Depression-era Texas farmland tale with a dusty sepia palette, and often stations the camera at a photographer's distance, to better capture the interplay between these shaken people. And yet, when a tornado hits the town, he and Benton do not resort to the standard cliche of faux-awed long shots. Instead, we're left within the visually impenetrable storm, struggling to register the bodies trapped within.

Edna Spalding (Sally Field, in an Oscar-winning role), is one of the people endangered by that event, but before that she's beset by other tragedies. Her husband, a law-enforcer, is tragically struck and killed by an errant bullet in one of the film's first scenes. She's left to manage their two children (Frank and Possum) and their land (which the bank promptly sets to work trying to bamboozle away from her). Not knowing how to sign a check -- much less, for instance, when a cotton-seed dealer is giving her a fair price -- Edna enlists the help, almost accidentally, of two exceedingly good Samaritans: Moze (Danny Glover), an ornery drifter with an encyclopedic mind, and Mr. Will (John Malkovich), a blind boarder pawned off on Spalding by her creditors.

The prime narrative concern, as it must be, is a financial one. Edna, her kids, and her humble bunch of helpers need to keep the farm by getting the very first bale of cotton to the neighborhood market come selling season. And from that, a densely rendered subtext develops about the intersections of race and class: Benton uses his close-ups to document the clean hands of Edna's two white children being torn up as they pick their first batches of cotton -- a physical reminder of their new place on the social ladder.

And yet, the film's greatest interest seems to lie not in the story or in the politics, but in the emotional lives of the people living in the community. How else to explain the close attention paid to Will's percolating relationships with the two children? Or the wrenching melodrama we see played out between Edna's in-law Wayne (Ed Harris), his wife, his mistress, and her husband? Or the way the camera always catches Moze when he's alone, with the soundtrack always making a point to hear the sentences he mutters under his breath, when there aren't any white folk around?

Benton is unafraid to branch out into other character's bedrooms, in search of the strongest dramatic moments he can find. It suggests a true love for the characters depicted here, and that feeling is only bolstered by the audio commentary included on the Blu-ray disc. Field speaks with Twilight Time staffer Nick Redman about her passion for the project, and her perspective on the lasting significance of the role she was playing. (The disc also includes a trailer and a booklet, which features an essay by Julie Kirgo.) Her sheer reverence for the people onscreen reveals exactly what it is that makes "Places" more than an actor's showcase: When you stare into the tornado, and into this dusty past, it seems that the people trapped inside have lives that extend far beyond the screen's frame.

"Places in the Heart"
Blu-ray
$29.95
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