Places in the Heart

Director: Robert Benton
Year Released: 1984
Rating: 1.0

Sally Field plays a strong - but not exceptionally intelligent - woman trying to support her family by raising cotton (with the help of Danny Glover) in director Benton's autobiographical film. For some strange reason, the director cuts back and forth between the Field story and the Ed Harris subplot, but the two don't exactly go together (they're almost different movies), as Field's narrative is about struggling for survival and Harris' is about infidelity; oh, and if that wasn't enough, he fumbles around with the idea of racism, too. The last scene, which comes out of nowhere, takes place in what I can only assume is the Divine Hereafter, where everyone drinks wine in absolute harmony; it should be added that if Paradise is (literally) a giant Church, atheists and other non-believers are in trouble.