MartinHafer Back in the 1950s, "The Trip to Bountiful" was a very successful stage play. I mention this because the film is a bit slower than many movies and it's easy to imagine it being performed live...much of it because the film has quite a few monologues. This is NOT a complaint....and I really enjoyed the picture...even if it's a bit of a downer at times.When the film begins, Mrs. Watts (Geraldine Page) is living with her adult son (John Heard) and his god-awful wife, Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn). Jessie Mae is a very controlling and nasty lady and she seems to go out of her way to make Mrs. Watts feel like she isn't wanted. Oddly, she also doesn't necessarily want her to leave, either! In fact, Jessie Mae just seems to like complaining and making everyone miserable. As for her husband, Ludie is a wimp who wants everyone to get along but allows his wife to make the household tense. Within this atmosphere, Mrs. Watts has a strong desire to leave...not permanently, but to visit her old home town of Bountiful. While this seems like a reasonable thing, especially since Mrs. Watts is elderly and has a heart condition, Jessie Mae insists that she is not ALLOWED to make the trip...and that is that! Well, Mrs. Watts knows the only way to make this one last trip is to sneak off on her own...and she does.What follows is a long and leisurely film where Mrs. Watts meets several nice folks...nice folks who take the time to listen to her prattle on and on. It's obvious that no one has been listening to her...and she is making up for lost time! So what happens? See the film.The reason to see this film is the acting. Geraldine Page is delightful and I can see why she earned the Oscar for Best Actress. But I also thought that Carlin Glynn was also terrific. After all, I really, really wanted to throttle her...and she and the director did a great job in creating a strong emotional reaction in viewers. A nice character study and a film that might just make you shed a few tears...so have some Kleenex handy.

spheckma A Trip to Bountiful is in it's simplicity and superb acting a wonderful, wonderful, gentle trip, both real and metaphorically a beautiful movie. It is a tour de force for Geraldine Page. Her physicality is a thing beyond compare. Rebecca Demoney is also superb in one of her first appearances. Horton Foote has the ability to take a simple situation and make it a marvel of writing and style with a gentle touch, but considering that gentle touch and style so much as conveyed that a person comes away wondering how it was accomplished. You are given not only a feel for the people, but the wonder of the place where it takes place. Bountiful may or may not have been real, but in this story it is and to Carrie it's more real than anything else in her life and more important then anything that she get to see it one last time before her life is over. To reach this end she defies her irritating daughter-in-law who not only bow beat her, but her son; husband to the daughter-in-law. I bought this movie so I could watch the artful performance of Geraldine Page over and over again as every moment of her performance is sheer perfection. When you give an actress as great as her the words of Horton Foote you can't help, but have a magnificent performance.

victor7754 The Trip To Bountiful is a touching and thought provoking film on the human condition as we grow older and the generations of our existence begin to fade into others leaving some of us behind to dwell in how beautiful life was. The film opens on a hymn "Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling..." and there is a young mother chasing her son, a boy through a golden field touched by lilac. The mother catches her son and lifts him to her chest and hugs him deeply and there is a warm start to what will be a great story on the human condition through the aging of time.From the Golden Field serenaded by a hymn the future is laid upon us and we see the Mother, 40 years later rocking in a chair staring out a window in a city apartment humming a hymn. Meet Geraldine Page the Oscar winner who portrays Carrie Watts, A Woman determined to go back to her rural country hometown Bountiful and relive the moment. Carrie lives with her son Ludie portrayed by John Heard in his city apartment along with his wife Fannie Mae who dislikes the humming of hymns. Fannie Mae is a pain in the ass caught up in new post war II bourgeois Caucasian existence.The film follows Carrie on her adventure to get to Bountiful and the petty events that try to stop her. Rebecca Demorney fills the screen for a brief moment and reminds us how beautiful youth and innocence is and how kind we all can be as strangers.A lyrical and teary eyed experience. Gets you in the heart and reminds us to embrace the presence and prepare for a future.

Syl Geraldine Page won an Academy Award as Best Actress for her role in the Horton Foote drama, "A Trip To Bountiful," about a widowed woman living with her son and his wife played memorably by Carlin Glynn in Texas. She yearns for one last trip back to Bountiful which is a dying town. She meets Rebecca DeMornay, a fellow traveler, and they bond. The most interesting scenes are when she tries to escape her son's apartment and go to the bus station. All she wants is one trip to Bountiful before she dies. When she gets there, it's more of a ghost town or cemetery than a town itself. She has to convince others of her quest for one last trip to Bountiful before she goes.