Very best movie i ever watch

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A Masterpiece!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Most films that are made in the 80's have special places in my heart. This is one of those films. Watching and getting familiarized with them tells a lot about the modern cinema. You can track the progress of great actors and actresses as well as the directors. I just finished watching "Places in the Heart," but it took me a lot of time to find this film. It is getting harder and harder to watch older films. Since this review will be the only source of this beautiful drama, I will try to write it good, so it will be a future reference for me. "Places in the Heart" is written and directed by Robert Benton, who is also known as the director and the screenplay writer of the five Oscar-winning film Kramer vs Kramer. "Places in the Heart" stars Sally Field, Ed Harris, John Malkovich, Lindsay Crouse and Danny Glover. Each and every performance is awesome in the film, but there must be a special note for Sally Field, as Edna Spalding, who plays the role of a widowed woman, left alone with her two kids in debt after her husband is shot. Her gestures and mimics help the atmosphere of the film a lot. There is a constant sorrow in her eyes and she really makes you forget the fact that she is actually acting. This performance got her an Academy Award for The Best Actress in a Leading Role, but it is not very easy to say that "Places in the Heart" is only about her. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including The Best Picture, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, John Malkovich, which as a blind guy, really deserved to win this award, Best Director, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Lindsay Crouse and Best Costume Design. The reason why I counted all the nominations was to show you that three out of seven nominations were for the individual performances. That being said, performances are one of the strongest points of the film, as well as the story. As I was saying, "Places in the Heart" doesn't focus on one story. What makes this film complete, is the fact that there are a lot of little pieces gathered together. Film focuses on Edna Spalding and her kids after her husband dies, how she tries to get the hold of things around her life and her house. In the meantime, Moses (Danny Glover) shows us the real struggles of black people in Texas, USA in 1930s while working for Mrs. Spalding, and, in my opinion, because of this reality, "Places in the Heart" was critically acclaimed. On the other hand, there is a story of a blind guy, Mr. Will (John Malkovich) who moves into Edna's house and help her with almost everything. Unrelated to the main story among these three, we witness some other side stories in the town of Waxahachie, Texas, and these seemingly unrelated stories, focus on the reality of the lives that were lived around that era of 1930s.The harmony of side stories with the main story creates the strongest point of the film. As a drama and the atmosphere, "Places in the Heart" reminds me of Tender Mercies minus the songs. Soundtracks are not the strong points of this film, because it focuses on something directly related to the lives of white and black people once upon a time. The last scene of the film was in the church, where everyone, including the dead ones, gathered together drinking the wine and eating the bread. This somehow reveals the real purpose of the film. All the good and bad people are there together gathered around the god. "Places in the Heart" opens with a similar scene in the church. This film is a drama, it is a piece from real life, but in some scenes, I found myself unwillingly smiling. This is what happens to me when I watch a really good film. I always say for films like this, where nothing really happens, we just witness a period of time of some people's lives. "Places in the Heart" is a good example for this statement. Dresses and manners of people of that era are brilliant and real in the film, which made me ask, how we have arrived to the age of clowns from that era of gentlemen. To prove my statement, just go out sometime and observe people. The way they dress, the way they act and the way they talk will impress you. This is the beauty of old films. They help you make comparisons between eras, and make you understand and see towards where humanity is going. I know this has nothing to do with the film, but I had to mention this as well.

Showered with accolades upon release, Robert Benton's "Places in the Heart" (1984) stars Sally Field as Edna Spalding, a Texan widow who tries to save the family farm during the Great Depression.The 1980s saw the release of a number of "women's pictures", most of which were influenced by second-wave feminism, and most of which saw strong women struggling to either beat the odds or triumph against hordes of mean, nasty men. For a number of years, Sally Field was at the forefront of such movies. Like her role in 1979's "Norma Rae", Field's Spalding is a woman who's constantly belittled, conned and taken advantage of. Talent and tenacity eventually win the day, though, little miss Spalding proving all her doubters wrong."Places in the Heart" features fine production design, Benton and his crew creating a nice portrait of life in 1930s Texas. Joining Spalding on her adventure are two other down-on-their-luck characters, a handicapped man played by John Malkovich and an African American drifter, Moze, played by Danny Glover. As is typical of Benton's films, the trio form a surrogate community, a band of beautiful losers who help each other out."Places in the Heart" closes at a church ceremony, in which the dead and the living congregate. "Charity never faileth," a Bible passage informs us, before the film pushes towards its bittersweet ending. Spalding may keep her farm, but her triumphs are tainted.Though a fine picture, "Heart" sports a dull subplot involving Edna's adulterous relatives. And though it overturns several Magical Negro clichés, Benton falters terribly in his last act. Here, via a contrived series of events, Moze is rushed out of Benton's picture, all so as Edna may stand on her own two feet. "Heart" would earn Field an Academy Award.7.9/10 – Other good, Depression Era films: "Bound for Glory", "Grapes of Wrath", "Paper Moon", "Modern Times", Wyler's "Dead End", Kazan's "Wild River", "I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang", "Little Man, What Now?", Altman's "Thieves Like Us", "King of the Hill" (1993), "Cradle Will Rock" (1999), William Wellman's "Wild Boys on the Road" and "The Public Enemy", King Vidor's "Our Daily Bread", "Gold Diggers" (1933), "Sullivan's Travels" and Linklater's "The Newton Boys".

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.

The first time through, you think you've seen Places In The Heart before, this meager drama of pathos set in a simpler time. Sure, it's acted by a prestigious ensemble. And yes, the story it tells is nothing if not respectable. But even the title is generic and sentimental, like any number of Hallmark TV movies. Sally Field's acceptance speech for her (deserved) Oscar win is better remembered today than the movie itself.At its most powerful, film juxtaposes images to create ideas in the mind of the audience. By this measure, the last shot of Places In The Heart is among the most transformative in all of movies. Taken out of context, it has no significance, and yet is so startling and unexpected —while at the same time so gentle and so much in keeping with all that's come before it— that it might first be confusing. It's one of the greatest shots in movies, because it re-contextualizes all that comes before it.What writer-director Robert Benton aims at and finally accomplishes in Places In The Heart is so beautiful that the movie transcends its origins as a period piece to become a picture of nothing less than the kingdom of heaven.