Cinema: On Golden Farm the River

Just everything goes wrong for Farmer Tom Garvey (Mel Gibson) and his ever- sufferin’ wife Mae (Sissy Spacek). The local river rises and floods their corn crop; an agricultural cartel tries to buy them out; the mean old banks threaten to foreclose on their land; and Mae gets her arm caught in a corn- picking machine. But Tom will not be swayed: “I ain’t leavin’. ‘Cept in a box.” And so he joins the farm women of Places in the Heart and Country as Hollywood’s nominee for the collective American hero of 1984.

Mark Rydell, who directed The Reivers and On Golden Pond, knows how to keep this stuff moving, if not how to make it moving. Here is a story ripped from today’s headlines–BAD TIMES FOR THE SMALL FARMER–filmed in a style of roseate elegy. Everything is romanticized, from Mom biting into the season’s first ear of corn to Junior eating Oreos on the cab of the family flatbed truck as God’s sun sets behind him. Gibson’s baby-faced doggedness and Spacek’s ingratiating freckles suit them more for roles as college quarterback and star cheerleader than for hardscrabblers against calamity. But the Hallmark glow is appropriate, for this River is no Depression documentary; it is a fantasy of domestic integrity, where the spirit of Walker Evans surrenders to the sentiment of Walt Disney. The film may win no Oscars, but it just noses out The Killing Fields for this year’s Noble Prize.