I don't believe in "miracles".......BUT........This film is truly a miracle! Filmed in just a couple of weeks, made for very little money, lasting a brief 90 minutes, it is one of the most beloved and cherished films probably ever made in the U.S. It is at once so simple and so profound. It is a film about resilience....about true love, and true sacrifice. In the middle of Nowhere (and I really mean the middle of Nowhere), USA, as a group of poor nuns, and poor parishioners, and a poor priest elicit help (and grace) from a poor black man, they go about their routines...Homer repairs a roof, the shopkeeper makes breakfast, the German nuns repair a fence, and charmingly practice and learn their English first from a Gramophone, then from Homer, the "Mother Superior" keeps an iron fist determining what should and should not be done...when and how, and a tiny church is built by hook or by crook by Smith. But every few moments, as a particular truth is uttered, or a connection made, or a kindness offered, or a smile bigger than the sun spreads across Homer's face--the film sometimes just takes your breath away. It looks so sympathetically at all these people--it embraces them, makes us understand them, respects them, feels for them. We should all be so lucky to encounter a Homer Smith in our lives--filled with the joy of life, realistic, pragmatic, but also a dreamer with the soul of a great and generous man, who makes us laugh out loud and feel protected and safe. But all the people, with their faults and foibles become just as cherished in their own ways as Homer. The nuns with their spiritual purpose and sacrifice, Strong Sister Mary with her unshakable (and often annoying) faith, the parishioners with their jealousies, but also their generosities....they are a microcosm of all of us. They are every race and creed. They are generous and stingy, happy and sad. But they survive--they go on and work and struggle....and sometimes a bright, shining, inspirational light like Homer enters their lives, but, even when he will disappear, as inevitably happens (all good things come to an end!)...they still go on...with love and work and toil and ultimate optimism in life and all its glorious, radiant possibilities. Lilies of the Field. One for the Ages!!!
Review of Lilies of the Field
