Places in the Heart feels like a film I've seen before. I'm familiar with stories where a tough-as-nails woman pulls herself up by her bootstraps and fights to support her family. I think Sally Field was perfect casting, because she can be the meek woman we meet early on in the film, but also transition into a strong character that holds her own against all the men around her. I also enjoyed what Danny Glover brought to the movie. He plays an endearing man that I thought fit the narrative of the film, even if he rides the line of being a clichéd "magical negro." I also liked John Malkovich as the blind man that is staying on the farm with everyone else. It felt like his character might go one direction, but I was pleased to find that he defied all my expectations. Frankly, with a trio of unlikely protagonists like these, it's hard not to root for them. Considering the fact that they're all underestimated by society for one reason or another, you instantly hope they will succeed. So, I was invested in the story even if it was familiar in all its themes.
I think where the movie threw me off was the amount of time and attention that is spent on a completely unrelated love triangle. It was downright confounding every time attention was pulled away from our heroes and their struggle to get by, in order to look in on Ed Harris and his affair. I kept thinking this messy B-story would eventually tie into the main plot and would have a purpose, but it was not meant to be. Instead, it's almost like a strange filler that was shoved in to push the movie closer to 2 hours. That whole nonsense should have been removed from the film, and it would have been better for it. Then they might have had more time for character development on the main characters, which could subsequently make Danny Glover pull further away from the trope I mentioned. The end of the film is also a puzzling anomaly, but I don't mind a little symbolic moment as the epilogue to a movie like Places of the Heart. It didn't fit all that well with the rest of the film, but it didn't break the story either. This is a perfectly fine movie, but not one that will inspire me to seek it out again.
I think where the movie threw me off was the amount of time and attention that is spent on a completely unrelated love triangle. It was downright confounding every time attention was pulled away from our heroes and their struggle to get by, in order to look in on Ed Harris and his affair. I kept thinking this messy B-story would eventually tie into the main plot and would have a purpose, but it was not meant to be. Instead, it's almost like a strange filler that was shoved in to push the movie closer to 2 hours. That whole nonsense should have been removed from the film, and it would have been better for it. Then they might have had more time for character development on the main characters, which could subsequently make Danny Glover pull further away from the trope I mentioned. The end of the film is also a puzzling anomaly, but I don't mind a little symbolic moment as the epilogue to a movie like Places of the Heart. It didn't fit all that well with the rest of the film, but it didn't break the story either. This is a perfectly fine movie, but not one that will inspire me to seek it out again.