"Mrs. Miniver" (1942)/"Places in the Heart" (1984)

Director William Wyler’s “Mrs. Miniver” was a popular and critical success in 1942.  It won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Wyler, and Best Actress for Greer Garson.  This story of an upper-crust British mother, nobly holding her home, family and community together as Hitler’s bombs fall around them, is personal narrative on an epic scale that was Hollywood's specialty.  It is one of the great classics of its era, a big and entertaining movie, that still has a lot to say in these times of uncertainty.

Watching "Mrs. Miniver" now, more than 70 years later, we can see how accurately the events of the film mirror our physical and emotional concerns during the pandemic. In spite of a few 1940s movie conventions that a modern audience might ridicule, “Mrs. Miniver” captures the fear of an encroaching disaster, the anguish of random death, and the sacrifice of strong, generous people as their familiar way of life verges on destruction.

The Minivers (Garson and Walter Pidgeon) are a privileged couple with two young children.  They enjoy the frivolity of buying hats and driving new cars. Their oldest son, Vin, returns from Oxford for the summer, a righteous activist for the working man; he's like a young Bernie Sanders. 

Vin falls awkwardly in love with Carol, the understanding granddaughter (Teresa Wright) of the neighboring dowager, Lady Beldon (Dame Mae Whitty).  Lady Beldon is conscious of her wealth and her elevated place in society, and disdains those who are not part of her social station.

Soon, during the local church service, the Pastor (Henry Wilcoxon) announces that England is at war.  The genteel, even mundane aspects of life are about to be lost.  Private homes are required to participate in nightly blackouts, or face steep fines.  Mr. Miniver is recruited to join the fleet of small ships at Dunkirk. Vin and Carol are married two weeks before Vin enlists as a flier in the RAF.  The wealthy Lady Beldon must extend a hand of generosity to her less-fortunate neighbors, her mansion filled with provisions for the long haul. Mrs. Miniver holds down the home front, as she heroically (if improbably) survives a threat from an injured German parachutist, whom she holds prisoner in her kitchen until help arrives.

The parallels to what we have encountered during our pandemic-- the fear of death, the concern for basic needs, the worry about loved ones we are unable to be close to -- are striking.  These concerns are movingly expressed in a monologue Carol delivers to Mrs. Miniver just before Vin leaves for the Air Force. She knows he might not return from the War, and cherishes what little time they have to be happy together. She speaks to the feelings of many who hope that their own loved ones don’t succumb. In the end, Vin and Carol's love story becomes a cruel and random irony. 

The most powerful scene in the movie is a perfect metaphor for the nightmare of the pandemic.  The Minivers, with their two youngsters and the family cat, retreat to their cramped, dimly-lit bomb shelter, attempting to remain safe and shield the children from fear before an enemy attack. Soon the bombs explode, getting closer and louder in a frightening crescendo, while the family huddles, cut off from the outside,unable to see what's happening. The fear of the unknown, the claustrophobia of forced isolation,are palpable to many of us who are also waiting, in uncertain isolation, concerned for our lives.

 “Mrs. Miniver” ends with a sermon, delivered in a damaged church to a decimated congregation as they mourn the losses of characters we also have come to love.  The sermon became world-famous, even cited by Winston Churchill as having been instrumental in the war effort.  “Mrs. Miniver” helped to soothe weary families, and helped to increase participation in WWII, which America had entered just before the film was released. It is a moving story, a record of a bygone era whose basic human concerns are now our concerns.  It is well worth a look today.

“Places in the Heart” seems to have little in common with “Mrs. Miniver”. It is set in small-town Texas during the height of the Depression.  Instead of a privileged family struggling to maintain a comfortable life amid the ravages of war, “Places in the Heart” tells a story about a modest family coming to terms with devastating personal loss and hardship, and a portrait of a community of the poor and dispossessed, who have very little and are in danger of losing even that.

Sally Field, who won her second Oscar here (in her famous “You like me” speech), plays Edna Spalding, the wife of the small-town sheriff.  When her husband is killed by a young black man in a freak accident, the townspeople lynch and kill the perpetrator.  Left alone, with no skills, little money to pay her mortgage, and an untended cotton field, she is forced to take in a boarder, Mr. Will, a blind chairmaker (John Malkovich) to make ends meet. 

Modern audiences, especially those suffering the anxieties of job loss, diminished life savings, and empty store shelves, might identify more with “Places in the Heart” at first glance.

Looking at both films now, it’s possible to find their common elements. Like “Mrs. Miniver”, Mrs. Spalding has two small children for whom she must struggle to support. She is also respected by her friends in the community; they are sympathetic to her plight and try to help her  in whatever small ways they can. Like "Mrs. Miniver", the church is a center of gathering and support.  Both films end with a sermon.

Unlike “Mrs. Miniver”, whose community rallies together to fight against a common evil, the world of “Places in the Heart” is polarized, and the hardships the characters must endure are exacerbated by conflict—in this case, racism.

When a black vagrant named Moses (Danny Glover) comes begging for food, Mrs. Spalding takes him in, and together they hatch a plan to win the annual prize-money for delivering the first cotton crop to the gin.  This quietly eventful movie observes how Edna and her children, Mr. Will, Moses, and a community of black workers, struggle against time, weather, and the Ku Klux Klan, to earn enough prize money to survive just a little longer.  In between are subplots involving extended families, infidelities, and natural disasters.

A sequence with a direct parallel to “Mrs. Miniver is a well-filmed tornado scene, which takes place inside the Spalding’s storm cellar.  Like the Minivers’ bomb shelter, the storm cellar is small, cramped, isolated, and shaken with the frightening sounds of approaching destruction.  Once again, the fear of the unknown as we are confined and cut off from friends and community, is effectively portrayed.  Afterward, the damage is assessed--as we know will be the case when this virus subsides—and life comes slowly back to normal, although everything has changed.

“Places in the Heart” is a movie of small moments and a few impressive set pieces, that build to a powerful fadeout.  While the finale of “Mrs. Miniver” stirs people to action, the concluding sequence of “Places in the Heart” invites reflection and personal introspection.  The sermon heard at the end of this film is about forgiveness, and about love rather than about meeting a conflict with force. 

As the sermon ends, and communion is passed from person to person, the camera follows in an intricate pattern. Soon we are struck by the faces of both heroes and villains, and of those we thought had gone forever.  As the chorus swells with a familiar hymn, the camera settles on the faces of two characters, and fades out.

What just happened? What does this mean?  This one complex shot takes “Places in the Heart” from a conventionally humanistic story into the realm of something metaphorical, spiritual, even surreal.
 

It was one of the few experiences I have had at a movie when I sat there, overcome, going back over the entire movie in my head to understand my reaction.

Like a poem, the end defies description, its meaning more emotional than rational.

As we find ourselves stuck inside of our homes for weeks or months, as our worlds are shrinking, as we are unable to partake in activities that once gave us a sense of purpose and accomplishment, even meaning, we are left to review our lives to this point, with that mixture of awe and contemplation that we may feel at the end of “Places in the Heart”.