"I didn't used to worry. When I was young, I was so carefree. I had lots to worry me, too. Everybody was so poor back in Bountiful, but we got along. I said to my papa once, after our third crop failure in a row, 'Who ever named this place 'Bountiful'?" He said his papa did. In those days, it was the land of plenty. You just dropped seeds in the ground and those crops would spring up. We had cotton and corn and sugar cane. I think it's the prettiest place I ever heard of. Jessie Mae says it's the ugliest, but she only says that to bother me. Now, she only saw it once, and that was on a rainy day at that. She says it's nothing but an old swamp. 'That may be,' I said, 'but it's a might pretty swamp to me.'"
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's when they give the Academy Award to people who are doing the most acting rather than the best acting. Actually, I'm going to modify that. I can live with "most acting" if it's done right. For example, Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful. She acted up a storm playing Mrs. Watts, an elderly Texas woman who wants to see her childhood home one last time. The difference is that neither Page nor anybody in Bountiful's ensemble seemed to be calling attention to all the acting going on. I could pay attention to the characters and the situation, not the exertion, which is preferable.
Mrs. Watts lives with son Ludie (John Heard), and his wife, Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn), who's got a bit of the overage little girl to her. It's implied early on and eventually confirmed that all the trio have are each other. The situation is poignant, but there's also frustration, pettiness and weary affection. Anyway, Mrs. Watts buys her bus ticket, manages to evade Ludie and Jessie Mae and befriends people including Thelma (Rebecca De Mornay), a young wife; Roy (Kevin Cooney), the night clerk at the bus station 12 miles outside Bountiful and the sheriff (Richard Bradford) who's obligated to return her to her family.
A question's been hanging over many of this year's Thoughts On entries. Did Page deserve her Oscar for Best Actress? I haven't yet reached a conclusion. I'd give her a nomination, sure, and I do think she carried Bountiful. Page did some excellent work with a character and situation that could have been bogged down by too much pathos. Even when Mrs. Watts believes she's lost, she keeps some steeliness. After all, she is vowing not to bend to Jessie Mae's will and die in that two-room apartment in Houston.
Immediately after, there's some dialogue that haunts me a little. Mrs. Watts insists that she understands suffering. It's 15 years of "endless, petty bickering" that's got her upset and "made me like Jessie Mae sees me! It's ugly and I will not be that way!" I don't think the outburst would work as well as it does if on some level, we weren't frustrated by both ladies. You need to know that Jessie Mae's fussy and Mrs. Watts is feisty. But they're both human, they both love Ludie and they're both played by actresses who know what they're doing. Glynn holds her own opposite Page and the result is interesting to watch.
Bountiful was directed by Peter Masterson and adapted by Horton Foote from his play. Every so often, it's nice to enjoy a pretty low-stakes drama. It's apparent that Mrs. Watts isn't in the best of health, but we also can sense that death isn't yet her destiny. Her heart will last as long as she cuts out worrying. It's just like we can relax about the security of Ludie's job and his marriage. Foote just wasn't telling that kind of a story. Besides, Mrs. Watts has been through enough, what with losing her true love, having a husband she could only admire, burying two of her kids plus all her kin and accepting the past is past.
"It's so quiet. So eternally quiet. I'd forgotten the peace. Quiet. You remember how my papa always had that field over there planted in cotton?"
"Yes, mama."
"You see, it's all woods now. But I expect some day, people will come and cut down the trees, plant the cotton and maybe even wear out the land again. And then their children will sell it and move to the cities. And then, trees will come up again."
"I expect so, mama."
"We're a part of all that. We left it, but we can never lose what it's given us."
"Yeah. I expect. I expect so, mama."
Recommended.
Thoughts:
-- "I hate it when I can't think of things."
-- Box Office: Grossing $7.5 million on a presumably low budget, this came in at No. 103 for 1985.
-- Critic's Corner: Page was never better, according to Vincent Canby, who also praised the balancing act of keeping the movie from being too much a play on film or overdone to emphasize it's a movie. "The movie is intended to be a hymn," Pauline Kael wrote, but all (Foote) and Masterson can do is give some of the characters a limp, anesthetized grace." I really like Roger Ebert's summary of the finale, where Mrs. Watts is telling Ludie "something he might never be able to understand: Someday he will be old, too, and he won't be able to believe it, either."
-- Awards Watch: Page won both the Oscar and the Independent Spirit Award, losing the Golden Globe to Whoopi Goldberg for The Color Purple. Foote won the Spirit Award for his screenplay, was also nominated as a producer (After Hours won Best Film that year) and lost the Oscar and WGA awards for adapted screenplay to Out of Africa and Prizzi's Honor, respectively. Masterson also lost the Spirit Award for directing to Joel Coen and Martin Scorsese, who tied with Blood Simple and After Hours.
-- Memorable Music: The score is 64-48, with a point for "Softly and Tenderly."
-- "I'm so thirsty I could drink 10 Coca-Colas."
-- Next: As of right now, Murphy's Romance (Monday), The Stuff (Tuesday), The Bride (Wednesday), Smooth Talk (Thursday), Trouble in Mind (Friday), A Chorus Line (Saturday) and next Sunday's finale.
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