The Trip to Bountiful

Director: Peter Masterson
Screenwriters: Horton Foote

Institute History

Description

The Trip To Bountiful, like many films from Oscar-winning screenwriter, Horton Foote, is deceptively simple, free from high drama, emotional pyrotechnics and contrived endings—like life itself. Beautiful set designs recreate Houston of the late 1940’s. Geraldine Page plays an aging woman. Mrs. Watts, in constant quarrels with her married children (John Heard and Carlin Glynn) and feeling imprisoned in their home. She decides to return to her past, her hometown Bountiful, a revered place of happiness and security now fading from memory. After several failed attempts, she makes to the bus station and is off. What she finally finds in Bountiful however is pitifully less than she expected.

The Trip To Bountiful works on several levels—as an excellent screenplay an exemplary regional production detailed and precise in its design as strong ensemble acting; and as a fine first feature film by director Peter Masterson. But in its deepest sense, it is about the last expressions of memory, will and hope—a last attempt to return to a place called “home.” Geraldine Page is outstanding in the role, a warm yet determined character and on-line for Oscar nomination.

Screening Details

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