Bounty

Peter Masterson's The Trip to Bountiful, starring Geraldine Page, has been one of my favorite films since it came out in 1985. Page's minutely detailed performance, complete with childish tantrums, coquettish flirting, sinking spells, and quiet triumph, is a lesson to me each time I watch it. As one of my acting teachers used to say, "It's all about specificity." And Page is the epitome of specific. For example, in one scene toward the beginning of the film, Page's Carrie Watts has decided to flee her oppressive Houston apartment and nagging daughter-in-law and to revisit her childhood home in Bountiful. She must keep this decision a secret from her cohabitants, who have caught her trying to escape to Bountiful before. In the moment when her son says goodbye to her, as sons say goodbye to their mothers when they go to work, we see Page in a tiny moment of ambivalence as she answers, "Goodbye, Son," knowing that if she carries out her plan successfully, it may be a while before she sees her son again. What Page so masterfully does is, halfway through her "Goodbye, Son," she allows her voice to catch ever so slightly on the "Son," as if she had an impulse to say goodbye to him more completely, but knowing that she musn't give away her plan for escape, she lets the moment go, and the film rolls on.

And then, as a film, it's just so good. It has its weak moments here and there; it isn't perfect. But the final image of Carrie Watts sitting in the back of the car headed back to Houston, her dejection, contentment, sadness and triumph all somehow mixed together on her weary face, never fails to move me.

When I saw the movie for the first time, alone, it had been just a few months since my beloved grandmother had died. Somehow in that final moment of the movie I was blessed with an epiphany having to do with the unconditional nature of my grandmother's love. Maybe it was something in Page's expression in that final shot. Or it could have simply been my projection onto the film because I was still grieving. In any case, I hold the film dear not only because of its excellence but also for the way it resonated for me personally.

This semester at one of my teaching jobs, I have a class of five 7th graders. In December I found a copy of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful (the play) at Barnes & Noble. We read the play in class. I was happy to note that the screenplay barely varies from the original.

I'm going to make a cutting of the play (30-35 minutes) and we're going to perform this play.