http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XczocuuAMV8
It is based on a play by Horton Foote. I love him; such an insightful writer. Geraldine Page won a well-deserved Oscar for her performance, and the music score is....perfect. An altogether understated, quiet film, but so powerful.
With facial expressions, body language, and a few pointed remarks and barbs in the opening scene, we instantly recognize the plight in which Carrie Watts finds herself. Old, lonely and wistful, forced to live with her only son and his selfish, carping wife in a two room apartment, Carrie longs to go home. To Bountiful, Texas. She'd really rather be almost anywhere but here, but Bountiful calls her, pulls her. She remembers happy days there, and shares a poignant memory of running in the moonlight there with her son when he was small...she was young.
Ludie, Carrie's son, is a weak, ineffectual man, who, unlike his mother, fails to find joy in the small things of life. He denies any recollection of the moonlit excursion with his mother. He has clearly shut the door on his past, and is struggling, grim-faced and white knuckled, to simply hang on to the present.
The story unfolds as Carrie escapes the prison of Ludie and Jessie Mae's apartment. We feel her sense of urgency and longing. We cheer as she foils their attempts to stop her; especially when we learn Carrie has tried many times to run away to Bountiful. Carrie befriends the sweet and accommodating Thelma on the bus. Thelma learns about life from Miz Watts and becomes protective of her. Carrie learns Thelma's husband has gone off to the service, and is kind and sympathetic. She knows about heartache.
Carrie is the recipient of kindness and generosity from strangers; which makes the absence of these from Carrie's own family all the more striking.
We feel the weight of Carrie's grief and disappointment as the reality of the ravages of time hit home. Her friends, her family, her way of life, Bountiful...all changed, all gone. We are sharply aware that this is the way of old age. That it awaits us all. Oh, that we could meet it with the grace and courage of Carrie Watts. A gentle, humble, unsung heroine of uncommon grit and valor.
