Country

The 1980s saw a huge turning point for mid-level American farmers. Up to this point, farming had been viewed as a life calling more than a business. However, during the 1970s, agriculture became a political tool as the federal government applied national price controls, import quotas, embargoes on exports, and fixed trade agreements to ensure an adequate supply of food and feed would be available in domestic markets. Farmers were encouraged to take out loans and expand their yields. The vast amounts of credit extended to family farms in the 1970s, at a time when agricultural markets seemed like they might expand forever, encouraged massive borrowing. But when supply exceeded demand, many family farmers found themselves deeply in debt with no way to pay off the interest. Banks seized land and equipment, and both farms and families were broken up. The Farm Crisis became a political hot button, turning many folks in red states against the harsh policies of the Reagan Administration. Rural farmers started to act like urban auto workers, demanding the government pay attention to the trap they found themselves in—not a dissimilar trap to the one many who were encouraged to take out too-good-to-be-true housing loans in the Aughts ended up in, or the massive student loan crisis many have been living with for decades now. Early '80s newspapers and TV news made a lot of "hay" about the farm issue. So it's unsurprising that screenwriters and studio execs would pounce on the story as a dramatic public interest subject. Of the trifecta of Hollywood dramas released at the end of 1984, Country is the most direct account of the farm crisis and the most unapologetically political.

'84 was an outstanding year for cinema in so many ways, but one major area where it came up short was its lack of female roles and shortage of great performances by women. This bucked the trend for the decade in general, as the 1980s saw a return by Hollywood to the level and quality of films about women aimed at women after everyone seemed to forget that women could be main characters during the hypermasculine, auteur-driven decade of the 1970s. The great female roles and performances of 1984 are mostly in genre movies like Romancing the Stone, Starman, and The Terminator, as well as a few comedies like All of Me, Broadway Danny Rose, and Sixteen Candles. But the year's major prestige pictures, like Amadeus, The Killing Fields, A Soldier's Story, The Natural, Once Upon a Time in America, The Cotten Club, and Under the Volcano, had few plumb roles for actresses. The usually reliable '80s stalwart Meryl Streep made one of her rare misfires with Falling in Love this year, and 1984 is more remembered as the year of Kate Capshaw whining and screaming in Temple of Doom and Andie MacDowell's dubbed voice in Greystoke. Outside the literary classic adaptations A Passage to India and The Bostonians, the three Save The Farm pictures of '84, Places in the Heart, Country, and The River, represent the only major prestige releases with women as the top-billed stars and female characters at the center of the narratives.

Even more than Meryl, Jessica Lange was the biggest female star of the '80s when it came to combining box office, critical praise, and awards. She was nominated for her acting an incredible FIVE times in this decade alone with Frances, Tootsie, Country, Sweet Dreams, and Music Box. She also produced Country, initiated the project, and conceived the idea after having many lengthy discussions with mid-western farmers. She wanted to make a contemporary version of The Grapes of Wrath and hoped to make the film with director Hal Ashby. But Ashby left when Disney took over the project from The Ladd Company. Lange had hired William D. Wittliff to write the screenplay and co-produce with her. He briefly signed on to direct as well but envisioned a more beautiful movie than Lange wanted to make. Lange wanted a film with grit and mud and sweat. She hired Richard Pearce, a filmmaker and cinematographer who came up through documentaries by the likes of cinéma vérité pioneers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker, to take over. She also enlisted her co-star and romantic partner, playwright Sam Shepard, to rewrite Wittliff's script, downplaying its sentimental qualities in favor of more rugged realism.

Like all three of these Save The Farm movies, the screenplay is not the film's strongest aspect, but this one features the fewest clichés by far. Country is, first and foremost, the story of a marriage trying to hold together under extreme stress. Shepard, who had just become a bonafide movie star by embodying all the qualities of the rugged, fearless, tight-lipped, idealized American male with his iconic portrayal of Chuck Yeager in the previous year's The Right Stuff, plays a far more typical angry, trapped, beaten-down American male here. While Lange manifests the never-quit, resistance-in-the-face-of-adversity attitude of many rural Americans. Both actors give fantastic performances, as does Levi Knebel as their stoic son.

The movie creates a realistic portrait of a rural Iowa couple, Gil and Jewell Ivy, who have prospered working Jewell's family farm for years until low crop prices, interest on loans, and pressure by the Federal Housing Administration to reduce their operating expenditures put them at risk. A tornado, alcoholism, old equipment, and financial mismanagement don't help the struggling family suddenly faced with the prospect of losing their home and livelihoods. Jewell's father, Otis (Wilford Brimley), does not want to see his family farm lost to foreclosure but feels powerless to turn the tide. He blames Gil for the failure. Jewell's strength of character and persistence gives everyone hope, but in a movie that strives for realism, we all know that determination may not be enough.

Both Country and Places in the Heart had modest budgets under $10M, but Pearce and cinematographer David M. Walsh are unable to turn their lack of resources into an advantage for this film. Country doesn't have a distinctive look like its sister farm pictures possess. The tornado scene, for example, is far less effective than a similar sequence in Places or the massive floods of the much higher-budgeted The River. The lack of ostentation should be one of the factors that make this movie feel more authentic, but, in the end, there's no getting around the fact that all three of these films are Hollywood melodramas with big movie-star performances at their center and sweeping musical scores emphasizing the emotional beats. Places in the Heart and The River lean into all this while Country fights it. Country is also a pretty generic one-word title. It's obviously meant to have a double meaning, but looking at it on a poster, you feel like they might have just as well called it Farm.

Nevertheless, Country succeeds in getting you worked up on the subject it explores. The issue of economic policies set by government bureaucrats and industry fat cats who live far away from the people on whom these policies will have the most detrimental effects is a timeless concern. America has never learned the lesson of these crises, and we continue to trust bankers, politicians, and the media that tell us that borrowing is not only safe but also the way to get ahead in America. As with the prior year's WarGames, we know what Ronald Reagan thought after seeing this movie because of his published personal diary. He called Country "a blatant propaganda message against our agri programs." Members of the U.S. Congress took the film so seriously that Jessica Lange was invited to testify before a congressional panel as an expert about living and working on family farms! (Only in America).

Of the three '84 Save The Farm films, only Places in the Heart, which is a period piece rather than a contemporary story, was a major box office hit. That probably shouldn't be surprising, especially in the case of Country, which is a downer movie. This is not the type of escapist fair that generally does well when people are suffering. But there's no question that these films had a powerful effect on the populace. The Farm Aid benefit concert organized by Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Neil Young arrived exactly one year to the date of the release of Places in the Heart, and the plight of the family farmer has been a Republican talking point ever since this year. It's deeply ironic that the images we think of from movies like Country were and are still used to push right-wing policies. After all, Reaganomics and bottom-line-driven banking practices were at the heart of this societal problem in the first place. The traditional "family farm" has essentially been a relic of the past for decades now, but they are constantly cited to make the idea of a proper estate tax on multi-millionaires seem like a terrible, villainous notion.