Nomadland & 9 Other Great Movies Set In The American Heartland
As the famous Woody Guthrie song "This Land is Your Land" describes, America is a diverse and majestic place, featuring several different locales with their own climates, cultures, and landscapes. Boasting deserts, plains, mountains, tropics, forests, and wetlands, America features many different kinds of natural environments, all cinematic in their own way.
One region of the country that's under-explored in cinema is the American heartland: the middle of the country, from northern Texas up through the Dakotas. While most films tend to take place on the coasts, a great deal of classic films take place in middle America, as well as some underrated gems. Here are 10 examples of great films from America's heartland.
10 Nomadland (2020)
Released in February 2021, Nomadland stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman who hits the road in her van after losing everything in the Great Recession of 2008. The film is a beautifully photographed and superbly acted odyssey that serves as both a poignant character study and a love letter to America's forgotten communities. Director Chloe Zhao, unsurprisingly, has cited director Terrence Malick as an influence. Like many of Malick's films, Nomadland uses natural beauty, and natural light, to create a wistful, meditative atmosphere, and an engrossing, almost dreamlike, movie experience.
9 Days Of Heaven (1978)
Speaking of Terrence Malick, his 1978 film Days of Heaven is also a beautifully made heartland drama. Bill and Abby, a couple, flee their impoverished lives in Chicago and head to the Texas panhandle, where they get jobs on a farm. The farmer falls in love with Abby, who accepts his marriage proposal, believing he'll soon be dead, at which point she and Bill can inherit the farm. Unfortunately, the farmer, played by playwright Sam Shepard, doesn't go as quietly into the night as they had hoped.
Days of Heaven is widely considered one of Malick's best films, as it combines beautiful cinematography with a compelling dramatic narrative. Unfortunately, he's been known of late to place too much emphasis on poetic imagery, at the expense of sound storytelling.
8 The Bridges Of Madison County (1995)
The great Clint Eastwood directs and stars alongside Meryl Streep in this sentimental love story about Robert Kincaid, a photographer on assignment to photograph "the bridges of Madison County." He befriends a housewife named Francesca whose family is away for four days.
They fall in love, though they both know it's not to be. Francesca decides not to abandon her family for Robert, instead accepting that the two must part ways. Meryl Streep earned an Oscar nomination for her performance, and the film is still highly regarded as a sincere if a bit schmaltzy, romance.
7 The Indian Runner (1991)
1991's The Indian Runner is the story of two brothers in 1960's Nebraska on opposite sides of the law. Joe is a police officer, and Frank is an unstable hothead with a history of violence. Joe allows him to stay with him in defiance of his wife's wishes, which eventually causes turmoil within the family.
This was the directorial debut of actor Sean Penn, who wrote the screenplay based on bruce Springsteen's song, "Highway Patrolman," the fifth track off his acclaimed Nebraska album.
6 The Wizard of Oz (1939)
While most of the film takes place in the fantastical world of Oz, there's no denying that The Wizard of Oz is the most famous film of any setting in Kansas. At the beginning of the film, Dorothy's dog is ordered to be euthanized after biting a neighbor. She attempts to run away from home to save him but is ordered home by a fortune teller. She is then knocked unconscious when a tornado hits her house, sending her to Oz.
The film ends as she wakes up, back in Kansas, vowing never to run away from home again.
5 Field Of Dreams (1989)
1989's Field of Dreams is the supernatural baseball drama about a farmer who hears a mysterious voice that compels him to transition his cornfield into a baseball diamond. "If you build it, they will come," says the voice, and sure enough, once completed, the ghosts of the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox appear.
The film was shot mostly on location outside of Dubuque, Iowa, where the field still stands today as a major tourist attraction.
4 Nebraska (2013)
Acclaimed director Alexander Payne was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and so he sets many of his movies in his home state, including Election, About Schmidt, and, of course, Nebraska. Bruce Dern stars as Woody Grant, a curmudgeonly old man who wins a sweepstakes contest and travels from Montana back to his Nebraska hometown to claim his prize.
When word gets out that he's a newly rich man, it complicates his life and his relationships with his family and friends. The film, released in 2013, was nominated for 6 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Dern, who gives a remarkable comeback performance in the lead role.
3 What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)
Set in a fictional one-street midwestern town, What's Eating Gilbert Grape stars a young Johnny Depp in the title role, a young man struggling to care for his family in a fatherless household and on a meager salary. His mother is too obese to leave the house, and his younger brother, played by a fantastic Leonardo DiCaprio, has a mental disability. His difficult life is turned on its head when a lively young woman named Becky moves into town.
The film remains a minor classic to this day, and DiCaprio, at age 19, received a Best Supporting Oscar nomination for his performance.
2 In Cold Blood (1967)
1967's In Cold Blood shocked audiences upon its release, and still holds up to this day as a daring piece of American cinema. Based on the novel by Truman Capote which was inspired by true events, the story takes place in rural Kansas.
Two ex-cons attempt to rob a house where a storied loot they were told of in prison is hidden , but the plan goes awry and they end up killing the entire family, and hitting the road for Mexico. The brutality of the plot juxtaposes the serenity of the setting, making the film all the more unsettling.
1 The Last Picture Show (1971)
Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 drama The Last Picture Show turns 50 years old this year. It's a wonderfully poignant coming of age story set in a dead-end small town in northern Texas. A group of teenagers try and navigate their way to greener pastures as their high school graduation day approaches. The locale of the film is a metaphor for both the potential and the struggle of American life, and the script, the cast, and direction make The Last Picture Show an essential American movie.
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