The Trip to Bountiful

Composite Score: 83.7

Starring: Geraldine Page, John Heard, Carlin Glynn, Richard Bradford, Rebecca De Mornay, and Kevin Cooney

Director: Peter Masterson

Writer: Horton Foote

Genres: Drama, Family

MPAA Rating: PG

Box Office: $7.49 million worldwide

Why should you Watch This Film?

                The Trip to Bountiful is the 1985 film adaptation of Horton Foote’s 1953 play of the same name about an elderly woman trekking across Texas to visit her childhood home again. The film stars Geraldine Page as Mrs. Watts, the film’s central figure, a role that won her the Academy Award for Best Lead Actress that year. The film centers around Mrs. Watts and her endeavor to escape life with her son and overbearing daughter-in-law by escaping from their apartment in Houston and returning to her home in the rural areas of Texas, a small town no one seems to have heard of, called Bountiful. The exploration of memory, generational patterns, and country versus city living is elevated by Page’s leading performance, and those two aspects have solidified it as a truly great film.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                If you’ve ever seen any films adapted from plays, you’ll immediately recognize this film as another in that same vein, centering much of its action in a few connected rooms and simple sets, focusing on the dialogues between its various characters to tell the story rather than significant amounts of action. It’s a solid play to adapt into a film thanks to the landscape of the final scene being far more picturesque when shot on location rather than on a stage; however, aside from that locale shift, there’s not much to set this film apart from a stage play, and for some audiences, that level of dialogue and back and forth can leave them a bit dissatisfied. It’s not that the writing is bad or that the performances are not up to snuff; it’s just that the plot is fairly uninteresting, as it focuses so heavily on character development and very little on any story elements besides the basics, which it makes sure to spell out clearly in its dialogue.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                Thematically, The Trip to Bountiful has a lot to say about aging and the connections between different generations of people and the way that memory is tied to all of that, making the film a fairly interesting exploration of humanity. It’s not often that you find a film centered around one specific elderly woman that doesn’t also involve her having some kind of dementia or memory loss or terminal diagnosis, making this one of the more unique films in its particular vein and slightly more engaging for its originality. Rather than take on issues of illness or infirmity, this story simply tackles aging as a concept, allowing Mrs. Watts to serve as a broader representation of those elderly relatives who so often talk about the “good ole days” and “back on the farm” and all that. It is a reminder of the wisdom those people still carry and the humans that they still are. American society’s tendency to remove and/or dehumanize elderly relatives could learn a few lessons from watching this film.

                Helping make the film’s case for the elderly is Geraldine Page, delivering a broadly dynamic performance as Mrs. Watts, deserving of the Oscar that she won. Over the course of the film, she manages to play comedy, drama, tragedy, intrigue, childlike wonder, sage advisor, and plenty of other roles and genres all as the same character. Her performance serves as a reminder of the many levels of humanity, bringing a sense of realness to the story in the ways that she exhibits our many quirks and types all in one. It’s an impressive performance particularly considering the amount of focus fixed on her character. Even with limited action going on, she manages to hold the audience’s attention simply by acting the part she is given.

                Geraldine Page bears much of the burden of acting and delivering the message of the film in The Trip to Bountiful but carries it admirably and earns herself and the film a place among the greats in the process. The film’s inherently limited story action will hinder its rewatchability, but the leading performance and its implications for cultural understanding of the elderly bears seeing once. It is currently available to stream with ads on Amazon Prime Video or to rent on most other streaming services if you’d like to give it a go.