Genre: Drama
Director: Daniel Petrie
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Sam Shepard
Running Time: 103 minutes
Running Time: 103 minutes
Synopsis: Edna Mae (Ellen Burstyn) is a passenger in the car crash that claims her husband's life. She experiences a near-death episode but survives, although her legs are paralyzed. After relocating to the family farm in Kansas to recuperate, she discovers newly acquired healing powers. She regains the ability to walk and starts healing others, including preacher's son Cal (Sam Shepard). They start a romance, but Edna Mae's remarkable powers also attract controversy.
What Works Well: The tricky topic of supernatural events free of religious fervor receives brisk and thoughtfully human-centred treatment. Ellen Burstyn as Edna Mae represents a flaws-and-all everyday woman not seeking any attention, but suddenly thrust into the role of community healer. Love as the thread that binds is the only explanation she is comfortable articulating, with consequences among those insisting on attaching names and attributions onto extraordinary acts. Sam Shepard takes her boyfriend Cal on a dangerously complex journey, while Edna Mae's father (Roberts Blossom) never veers far from his stodgy version of right and wrong. As middle-of-nowhere gas station attendant Esco Brown, Richard Farnsworth contributes an epic single scene rich with heart and foreshadowing.
What Does Not Work As Well: Within the modest running length, many interesting narrative avenues and characters are introduced but then left undeveloped. The nature of death, spirituality, religion's role in belief and healing, scientific discovery, and most of the secondary characters cross Edna Mae's orbit without achieving traction.
Key Quote:
Esco Brown: Go carefully, with peace in your heart, with love in your eyes, and with laughter on your tongue. And if life don't hand you nothing but lemons, you just make you some lemonade. That's from Book Brown, Chapter One, Verse One.
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All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
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