Ancient widow, Hume Cronyn, lives on a Texas farm, miles from Houston. He has a couple of day workers hoeing the ground for planting corn but cotton isn't selling and the farm is almost broke. He's alone except for his friend and overseer, James Earl Jones, and Jones is now leaving to stay with his daughter in her city apartment. This leaves Cronyn alone with his blotched skin and sparse, straw-colored hair.
All set up for a cheap sentimental flick about how them old timers miss their wives and friends. Expect heartbreak. Expect dignified weeping. Expect the old timer to wind up stone broke but, with any luck, his equally old dog, probably named "Blue" or "Dog", will be at his side. "Il faut, d'aboard, durer," said Hemingway, who lost the thought somewhere along life's trajectory.
SURPRISE! First, there is no dog! Second, an oil company makes Cronyn an offer of eighty dollars an acre or so, according to Cronyn's lawyer, for the mineral rights to the land. There may or may not be oil under that parched ground. He gets some money if he lets them drill, and if they hit a gusher, he gets part of that too.
The offer sets in motion a flood of visitors, mostly relatives whose noses are barely above water and who WANT THEIR SHARE OF THAT MONEY. Cronyn's two sons -- Chris Cooper and Frederic Forrest -- haul their families out to the farm and kind of hint around about, well, sir, why don't you take that offer and, you know, kind of let them go ahead and drill because if they hit oil, well, you (and we) will get a share of the oil money too. Faithful retainer James Earl Jones returns too; Houston being full of crack and the apartment too containing.
Cronyn does take the offer, at a pretty good price too, enough to save the farm at least temporarily and to make his sons and their families viable for the near future. Does the oil come in? Does it matter? It's not a story about oil anyway. It's about family and friendship, and it's played superbly by the cast. (And what a cast it is.) Hume Cronyn is at the center of it all and as he shuffles around wearing that polite smile on his face, he seduces the viewer. He's the sort of old dude that we'd all like to be. When his two sons hear about the oil company's offer, they hurry to his farm house and sit around nervously before getting down to business. They cast furtive glances at one another, they twiddle their fingers, they sweat, they look at the floor and try to chat about the weather and how cotton depends on the weather.
And how does Cronyn handle all this? The periods of nervous silence and the edgy small talk? He smiles silently, listening gracefully as his sons work up to the subject that Cronyn knows is hanging heavily in the air. He's nearly perfect. So is just about everyone else.
You shouldn't avoid watching this because you suspect it might be another weeper, a sentimentalized Hallmark Movie, full of sobs and hugs and glowing with inner warmth. Horton Foote is too good a writer for that, and the production is made with adults in mind.
All set up for a cheap sentimental flick about how them old timers miss their wives and friends. Expect heartbreak. Expect dignified weeping. Expect the old timer to wind up stone broke but, with any luck, his equally old dog, probably named "Blue" or "Dog", will be at his side. "Il faut, d'aboard, durer," said Hemingway, who lost the thought somewhere along life's trajectory.
SURPRISE! First, there is no dog! Second, an oil company makes Cronyn an offer of eighty dollars an acre or so, according to Cronyn's lawyer, for the mineral rights to the land. There may or may not be oil under that parched ground. He gets some money if he lets them drill, and if they hit a gusher, he gets part of that too.
The offer sets in motion a flood of visitors, mostly relatives whose noses are barely above water and who WANT THEIR SHARE OF THAT MONEY. Cronyn's two sons -- Chris Cooper and Frederic Forrest -- haul their families out to the farm and kind of hint around about, well, sir, why don't you take that offer and, you know, kind of let them go ahead and drill because if they hit oil, well, you (and we) will get a share of the oil money too. Faithful retainer James Earl Jones returns too; Houston being full of crack and the apartment too containing.
Cronyn does take the offer, at a pretty good price too, enough to save the farm at least temporarily and to make his sons and their families viable for the near future. Does the oil come in? Does it matter? It's not a story about oil anyway. It's about family and friendship, and it's played superbly by the cast. (And what a cast it is.) Hume Cronyn is at the center of it all and as he shuffles around wearing that polite smile on his face, he seduces the viewer. He's the sort of old dude that we'd all like to be. When his two sons hear about the oil company's offer, they hurry to his farm house and sit around nervously before getting down to business. They cast furtive glances at one another, they twiddle their fingers, they sweat, they look at the floor and try to chat about the weather and how cotton depends on the weather.
And how does Cronyn handle all this? The periods of nervous silence and the edgy small talk? He smiles silently, listening gracefully as his sons work up to the subject that Cronyn knows is hanging heavily in the air. He's nearly perfect. So is just about everyone else.
You shouldn't avoid watching this because you suspect it might be another weeper, a sentimentalized Hallmark Movie, full of sobs and hugs and glowing with inner warmth. Horton Foote is too good a writer for that, and the production is made with adults in mind.
