The Honoraries: Danny Glover in "Places in the Heart"
Thursday, July 22, 2021 at 10:37AM We'll be celebrating each of the upcoming Honorary Oscar winners with a few pieces on their career. First up is Danny Glover who turns 75 today. Happy Birthday to a fine American actor!
by Eric Blume
Danny Glover shows up about fifteen minutes into director Robert Benton’s 1984 Oscar winner Places in the Heart, looking dapper and handsome in his worn suit, with an effortless charm that belies his character’s backstory. He insinuates his way into the life of widowed Edna Spalding (that year’s Best Actress winner, Sally Field) and into the film’s narrative. Sadly he always stays on the sidelines but Glover provides a radiance and a verve that display his burgeoning talent and resourcefulness.
Places in the Heart marked Glover’s first large-scale film role, and he seizes the role of drifter Moses and does everything he can with it...
He has a truly dumb section to execute when he’s talking to himself while hanging up a horseshoe on his front door. He has the good grace to lean into it comically and make it a bit. He doesn’t overdo the brave protector qualities and has a flash during a monologue where he lets you know where Moses might have been and what he might have gone through before the events we're seeing.
Benton’s film hasn’t, as you might have imagined, aged particularly well. Even at the time, its “sumthin’s-happened-to-yer-Pa” ethos was an eye-roller; it's a good thing that they don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Field’s second Oscar win has been widely criticized (and sometimes reviled), and her work here is far from her subtle, first Oscar triumph in Norma Rae. But Field finds pockets of smart ways to undercut her character’s earnestness: when she “saves” Moses and lies about something he’s stolen from her, she lets you see that Edna is doing it more for herself and due to needing someone to plant cotton for her, rather than to shove her wonderfulness down your throat (Benton does that enough for us). And Field finds a good rhythm with Glover: they’re both extraordinarily direct actors, and while they’re not able to bring much complexity to what’s on the page, they keep things simple and straightforward, and their individual warm screen presences align sweetly. (They would later be romantically paired in the second season of the drama series Brothers & Sisters).
We never learn a lot about Moses, and you keep wanting his character to figure in in a bigger way, like for he and Edna to start fucking or something. But he remains in noble cliché territory within the picture’s narrow confines, The film is more interested in an hour-one tornado sequence and climaxes with an actual cotton-pickin’ contest (no, I am not making this up). And I won’t even begin to tackle this movie’s politics: they’re a bit of nightmare, so let’s just say that for a movie about cotton, it’s actually pure corn.
Still, within the limitations, Glover delivers a star-making performance, the kind of thing that made the industry and audience stand up and say, “who is THAT actor?”. Glover has a camera face that’s beautiful and soulful, and an intuitiveness for each scene that keeps things fresh. He was on his way to bigger and better things...
Reader Comments (25)
Rewatched it for the first time in two decades thinking that I would dlsike it, but it's a very solid drama. Very strong ensemble work and a great final scene.
You really going to ignore the opening sequence that involves her husband being accidentally shot and killed by a drunk Black teenager. Whose dead body is dragged behind their truck and eventually delivered to Moses' house lynched from a tree? -- I hate this movie.
but that's what happened back then.
The film is hardly racist, but it's certainly tone deaf in spots, particularly at the very end when the "we're all reconciled under the Lord" scene plays out.
I show it in a senior seminar on films portraying Texas (along with TRUE STORIES, GIANT, LAST PICTURE SHOW, TEXAS CHAINSAW, etc.) and most of the white students really like it. The Black students... not so much. They quite understandably bristle at contemporaneous reviews (quoted in assigned reading) that called the film "heart warming" and "lovely". A black boy is lynched and a Black man (Glover) is forced to leave town at the end after having finally made a life for himself due to incredible smarts and heard work. I remember a young Black woman in the class saying, "it wasn't heart warming to me."
Sorry but I don't understand. Are these Honorary awards given by TFE? It must be, but please confirm that for me.
Hard work, not "heard work." Ugh.
@rrich7 No. The MPAAS gives out honorary Oscars every year. Glover is one of four people getting one this year. The others are Samuel L. Jackson, Elaine May, and Liv Ullmann.
@/3rtful:But dismissiveness, mistreatment and social disadvantage of black people in a segregated era is the only good thing the film did well. Steve McQueen level, I'd say, A huge example of it, it's that while both Glover and Field's characters are poor in the middle of depression there's still a submisiveness of him towards her because of race privilege.
However, I agree that all this excessive violence towards black people of the first scene is nothing more than a plot device to show she isn't "racist" per se by hiring him as her worker while no one from the white community would and even "despite" her late husband's accidental murder. The rest of the film is a mix of boredom, terrible politic choices (as you pointed out) and an anticlimactic tornado sequence. Definitely one of the worst films from the 80s and Field's Oscar is still an enigma to me (just as all the awards and nominations this film got to collect). Even with all its controversies, The Color Purple would've been a better choice for Glover, with a bigger role and a superior performance.
Danny Glover, a gifted actor, is not receiving an honorary Oscar for his outstanding career of fine performances. He is receiving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Hersholt, a Danish actor, is memorably recalled for his philanthropy. Hersholt devoted decades to raising movies for the Motion Picture Relief Fund as well as founding the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital to aid veteran filmmakers who have fallen on hard times. The honorary award was created to honor an “individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.”
According to the Academy Website, Danny Glover is being presented with the Hersholt Honorary Oscar in recognition of his service as “a lifelong community activist, his efforts for worldwide justice have inspired others to follow his leadership. He has been a particularly strong advocate for economic justice and access to health care and education in the United States and Africa. He has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program and is currently a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.”
Places in the Heart is "one of the worst films from the 80s"?? You realize this was the decade that gave us Friday the 13th Part III, Police Academy 6: City Under Siege, Warrior of the Lost World, Leonard Part 6, and Tarzan, the Ape Man, right?
Anyone who thinks this is the worst film of the 80's wasn't around in the 80's or saw few movies,Pia Zadora's Butterfly,anything Burt Reynolds did after 1981,any Chuck Norris film,the sequel slashers,Arthur 2,Jaws 3 and 4,Ishtar,Sahara with Brooke Shields any Police Academy and most of Steve Guttenberg's output,that terrible Tom Hanks romantic drama called Everytime we say Goodbye the list goes on.
As for Glover he plays his role well and is way ahead of the nominated Malkovich
James -- we are well aware of that. But we honor the careers of the Honorary recipients each year, whatever category they fall under
peggy sue --i love the final scene as well. I realize some people hate it but i like it when films risk non-realism to make points or to enter some other place (in this case the spiritual)
Mark -- right?! there were a ton of terrible movies in the 80s ;) though they are fun to write about. I had a ball writing up Tarzan the Ape Man a few years back.
That write up of Tarzan was 100 per cent comedy gold.
Glover's great but the film is such a slog - and it's esp. nutso it won Original Screenplay.
@people: So you're telling me this film can't cohabitate with all those movies you say? Just because it has Oscar stamp aproval doesn't make it good. This last year alone Hillbilly Elegy got to compete in two big categories and you're going to deny its awful status? The worst part is that those films you mention even get to live up at some points to their standards (silly comedy, slasher horror film, mid blockbuster entertainment, etc) or get some cult following for their campiness or crapiness. Places in the Heart accomplishes almost nothing!
@Me34. I think anyone who watched Places in the Heart on a double bill with any of the 80s disasters Mark or I alluded to (except for the much maligned Ishtar) would have to honestly admit Places is far better. Saying it's in the same category as Butterfly, Jaws 3, Friday the 13th Part III, or Cannonball Run is just absurd.
Where are all the Robert Benton fans today? Several months ago I mentioned that I thought he was kind of a second rate talent--though hardly a hack--and people wanted to hang me from the highest gibbet.
And let's be honest. It's also quite a bit better than Hillbilly Elegy. HE was a poverty porn film from Hollywood insiders. Places in the Heat was Benton's semi-autobiographical look at his hometown and has a real sense of sincerity and authenticity. It's much more nuanced and well crafted than a lot of the cornball Oscar bait films of that era, like The Trip to Bountiful, The River, and Cross Creek.
RobC your my hero,well put.
I hope Sally Field presents Donald Glover the award so she can say "I like him, I really like him!" It might be fun.
Places In The Heart and Field's victory are so underrated! Love your positive writing Eric! Truly leading the team in the right direction.
No Three Artful! Don't use being pro-black to diminish commonplace happenings of our people.
I meant to say Danny Glover, of course.
Lindsey Crouse and Amy Madigan were decent in this.
"Places in the Heart's" portrayal of the evil of racism has certainly aged better than what we saw in "Mississippi Burning." It's not histrionic about it but it's pretty impactful in its own mournful, delicate way.