Movie: The Trip to Bountiful
(Note: While talking with a friend this afternoon, she mentioned an older movie, “Back to Bountiful,” and told me a bit about it. My excitement grew as I realized that this movie is the one I’d been searching for ever since seeing it on television in the late 1980s. A search at Google proved its name to be “The Trip to Bountiful.” For those who enjoy a decent movie, this one has a five-star rating at Amazon.com [here] out of 42 reviews! Truly a family movie with much to offer each viewer. — Julie Kay Smithson)
Movie Review, NYT, December 20, 1985 [here]
The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
NYT Critics’ Pick (This movie has been designated a Critic’s Pick by the film reviewers of The Times).
By Vincent Canby
It’s 1947. Carrie Watts is a well-meaning, loving old woman but, as her son, Ludie, and daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae, know from years of experience, living with Carrie in a tiny Houston apartment is no picnic. It’s more like a Balkan truce.
When Carrie isn’t butting into Ludie and Jessie Mae’s business, she’s singing hymns that, according to her daughter-in-law, “are going out of style.” Even more irritating to Jessie Mae are the days when Carrie just stares out the window, “pouting.” She also has “spells” - her heart is unreliable, though the doctor has assured her that it will last as long as she needs it.
Carrie is no more fond of the arrangement than Ludie and Jessie Mae are. She longs to go back to Bountiful, the small Texas town near the Gulf of Mexico where she was born, married and raised her children, of whom only Ludie survives.
A return to Bountiful, however, is impossible. Nobody is certain that it even exists anymore, and there’s the persistent problem of money. Times aren’t great for Ludie and Jessie Mae, who are childless and approaching middle age with not much to show for it but each other.
On any average day, Jessie Mae will accuse Carrie of going through her dresser drawers, which is the one thing the refined Jessie Mae cannot stand. Carrie will respond by being rather imperially baffled by a woman who desires only to have her hair done or to go to the drug store to drink a Coke. Ludie, loving both women, satisfies neither.
One afternoon, while Ludie is at work and Jessie Mae is out sipping Coke, Carrie Watts makes a clean getaway. Wearing a hat that looks as if she always sat on it at the breakfast table, and her best dress, which sags in the wrong places, she takes off by bus for Bountiful. She travels light, carrying only an overnight bag, her pension check and some small change.
This is more or less the beginning of “The Trip to Bountiful,” Horton Foote’s funny, exquisitely performed film adaptation of his own play, directed for the screen by Peter Masterson. “The Trip to Bountiful,” which opens today at Cinema 2, is almost as unstoppable as Carrie Watts.
Letter to Steven
Hey Steven,
Tonight I accidentally watched the 11 o’clock news. I hate TV, and especially TV news, but the tube was on and something caught my attention.
It was Robt. Liberty. I have known him for years as head of 1,000 Friends of Oregon. You know, the pro-land use planning organization, proponents of Oregon’s “vaunted” statewide land use laws. But he was billed as a Metro Councilor, whatever that is. He was interviewed for a story about East Multnomah County. It seems that the Metro policy has been to jam high density, low-income housing into East County.
Now the crime rate there is skyrocketing. Drugs, robberies, assaults, etc. Highest crime rate in the state. The older residents who still own single-family homes are scared to walk their dogs anymore, to walk anywhere on the now Mean Streets of East County.
Robt. Liberty said, “It’s not the density, it’s the poverty.”
He is dead wrong. It’s the density.
People need space, or as I like to say, personal territory. When human beings are jammed together they react in pathological, anti-social ways. It’s not a moral or ethical problem. It’s a psychological one. High density affects people in a visceral way, just like rats crowded into a cage. Normally kind and compassionate people lose their bearings when their personal space is compressed.
Poverty is a condition related to high density. Land is wealth, real wealth (real estate). To be landless is to be poor, even if your income is high. To have land is to be wealthy, even if your income is low.
For over 30 years I have been fighting to help my clients get permits to build homes on their rural properties. I have butted heads with the land use planning crowd who wish to dehumanize the landscape and compress humanity into tight spaces.
I have been a “back to the land” guy since college. I believe in “resident stewardship” of the planet. I oppose wilderness, wildlands, open space, vast tracts of government land, roadlessness, and all the other land uses that prevent people from living on the land.
I am not a contrarian or a rebel. I support good government. But I don’t support confining human beings to high density living. That has placed me in the politically incorrect camp, but not because I seek conflict. On the contrary, I seek peace and harmony.
All the struggles I have been involved with, like our land use laws, federal megafires, small woodland stewardship, family farming, heritage cultural landscapes, tending our forests, etc., all come from the same place: giving people enough personal space (territory) to be sane, caring, and compassionate to the land and each other. I like what Steve Pyne said: “It’s about making this a habitable place.” That’s a deep concept.
And that’s what it is all about for me. It is all related to personal territory. Stewardship of the land means human presence, human connection, human personal space, human personal responsibility, and a decent society and landscape in which to live, for me, my children, and my neighbors.
The TV news was shocking tonight. I recoiled in horror once again at the violence and tragedy that has been wrought by the likes of Robt. Liberty. He seemed confused. He probably is not a bad person, depending on how you define that, but he has perpetrated a lot of suffering.
Just wanted to get that off my chest. Keep up the good work. You may not fully understand how good the work is that you do. It’s not about fighting the good fight; it’s about saving your fellow humans from undue suffering. It’s about making this planet a habitable place.
Your friend Mike
Imagine
Petersen, James D. Imagine. Speech to the 65th Annual TLA Convention, Vancouver B.C. Wednesday, January 16, 2008
James D. Petersen is Executive Director, The Evergreen Foundation [here] and 2007 President, Pacific Logging Congress
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
I have been asked to compare the timber industry/government relationship in the United States with the timber industry/government relationship in Canada, with the caveat that I can make this call as I see it, which very likely will not be how you see it.
But as they say, anyone who has traveled more than 50 miles from home is considered an expert, to be accorded all the rights, privileges and courtesies of such experts.
So imagine with me while I walk you through a comparison of the government and industry relationships in our two countries.
Imagine that you no longer have a voice in provincial forestry decision-making, none. Say what you will, but it carries no weight.
Imagine that any citizen living in British Columbia can oppose your harvest plan – and that person’s voice suddenly has more power than all of provincial voices that might be raised in support of your harvest plan.
Imagine living in a country with a “Sue the bastards” mentality. That’s the United States today. Any malcontent, any social misfit, any anarchist can go to court and stop a harvest plan in its tracks. There are environmental litigators standing on every street corner in the land who will gladly take the case for nothing. Why would a lawyer take a case for no money: because under our federal Equal Access to Justice Act, our taxpayers are forced to reimburse the lawyers for their court costs. This is how several of our most radical environmental groups fund their work. Creating and exploiting conflict has become a billion dollar industry in our country.
Imagine that your provincial government has surrendered your citizen voice to the most radical environmentalists living among you – and now says openly that those radical voices have constitutionally guaranteed rights that you don’t hold.
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