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Top Critics (3)
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DVD (3)
Places in the Heart is a loving, reflective homage to his hometown by writer-director Robert Benton.
[Benton's] memories provide the material for a wonderful movie, and he has made it, but unfortunately he hasn't stopped at that. He has gone on to include too much.
Out of the memories of his boyhood in Waxahachie, Tex., during the Great Depression, and within the unlikely tradition of the old-fashioned ''mortgage'' melodrama, Robert Benton has made one of the best films in years about growing up American.
Benton effectively re-creates depression-era Texas in this moving tale that landed the second Oscar for Field.
Set in the Depression, Benton's memory film is too sanctimonious and idealistic, showing how economic misery and hard times bring out the best, here in the form of a new community, composed of a white widow and her children, a black hobo and a blind.
Much is unemphatic, but all of it carries the moving weight of conviction. And it ends on a healing grace-note which passeth all understanding.
A treasure of a film. The performances are beyond great.
Field succeeds in making Edna both fragile and tough-minded, defiant not by character or disposition but by sheer effort of will.
Brilliant, Oscar-winning period piece
Benton's personal drama is soulful and utterly absorbing. And yes, we really like Sally Field in this defiant role
Emotionally affecting film about struggling through adversity and living with hope in a small Texas town during the 1930s.
quiet drama that settles into the memory like a story Grandma might tell
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