moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) (02/10/86)
[I wrote to my folks about this movie, and think that I summed up my reactions to the movie there. A portion of the letter is below.] ==== Feb 4th, 1986 Dear Mom (Dad can read over your shoulder if he wishes), Know I just wrote last week, but I (just now) got back from seeing a preview showing of "The Trip to Bountiful"; and like a few other films I've seen, it made me think a lot after I got out of the theatre and was walking home. Wanted to talk it out, as it has generated a few ideas in my mind (no applause, just throw money). First of all, I think you and Dad will enjoy it a lot; I think you will really enjoy it, as many of the characters in it remind me of Iowa and the times we've gone back, or I've gone back alone. It's about a elderly woman (Geraldine Page) who runs away from living with her son and her domineering daughter-in-law, to go back and visit Bountiful, a town on the Gulf Coast of Texas where she and her son grew up. The opening credits show a young woman and her son running through fields of flowers and reeds at night; it is to Page's (and the director's) credit that we can see the essence of that girlish, laughing spirit fifty or sixty years later, still living (though somewhat dampened) in Page's character. But the texture of the film is what I noticed the most, and what I wanted to write to you about. There are small-town people, and the friendliness I remember (and sometimes still find) on Greyhound busses. It's one of those things where the photography, and the locations, bring back memories that I had forgotten (hmm, poor wording there). The bus trip, and the fields, and the way the sun hits grass and cotton -- those are the things that register the most, though the characters, actors, and dialogue are very good too (Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay for Tender Mercies, did this, and his dialogue always seems to strike a resonant tone in me). I don't see sunlight like that much up here; by the time I leave from work, the sun only bounces off the windshields of the cars coming north on I-5, and looking on the side of the roads yields, at best, small forests of pine trees and, at worst, Levitz Furniture Clearing Houses. I remember a lot about the suburbs, too, but I've yet to see a film that could generate romantic nostalgia about them. But I guess some of this film brought back some of the feelings about those day trips to Fort Dodge; the times when we used to go out to (what I think was) Grandpa Harry's farm, or his folk's; where we'd walk back, past the farm that's there now, past the cows and through the fence, to where the old, broken-down, deserted house was. I don't know whose it was -- his or his parents or his brother's -- because, at that age, I guess I wasn't too interested. I wanted to be reading or watching TV or playing minature golf or something else. But, luckily, some of those days sank in; some of them sat deep enough to be pulled out and lit up by this film. I don't think everyone in the theatre liked it -- there were some snickers towards the end -- but I think for people like you and Dad and, to a point, I, this is the kind of film that brings out much of the feelings and the memories generated by the country. Not nostalgia -- it doesn't make you want to live in the past; and while the city doesn't thrill me in many respects, it has things like lots of films and book stores and privacy which I have gotten to take for granted, and that a small town would not provide. But it does make you want to remember, to look back and have something to point to and have a memory of. Hope that you are well, work is low-stress (hear, hear), and that Dad is enjoying himself in the Gulf refuges and that he's spotted a few species that he hasn't marked off in the book. Say hello to him from me when you see him. Your loving son, Jeff