Tomorrow--See It Today!

This is an early Robert Duvall film.  It is based on a story by William Faulkner which was later developed into a play by Horton Foote that Duvall starred in prior to the film.  Foote also wrote the screenplay.

The story begins during a Mississippi court trial where a jury is considering the case of a father who shot and killed the young man who was running away with his daughter.  The camera moves in on one of the jurors, Jackson Fentry, and provides us with Jackson's backstory and its relevance to this case.


Fentry (Duvall) is a farmer who is hoping to build his own farmhouse.  The man who owns the property where he hopes to build is not yet ready, so for the time being Fentry is living as a sort of caretaker on the man's sawmill property.  Fentry lives alone in a shack during the winter, and one day hears the moans of a woman in pain.

He indeed finds an unconscious woman, Sarah, (Olga Bellin) who is pregnant, and brings her back to his shack.  As the hours and days pass, Sarah admits she escaped her father and brothers by marrying, but then was abandoned by her husband.  Fentry nurses her and eventually wants to marry her but Sarah does not think that is proper as she is already married.

I really liked this, and how the film really takes the time to develop the two main characters of Jackson and Sarah.  Duvall's accent took some getting used to (it reminded me of Heath Ledger's mumbling in Brokeback Mountain).  At first I thought the courtroom scene in the beginning was odd.  Yet the film didn't feel aimless while developing the two characters but showing us the story, so that by the end you know what the court scene meant for Duvall's character.  And for two reasons too, that the girl was a reflection of Sarah escaping from her family, and of course the boy's story that was much more personal. 

I also liked the performance of the actress who played the midwife, Sudie Bond.  Her actions seemed realistic to her character and she was savvy enough to determine Sarah's frame of mind and not just her physical health.  It felt like it was something the midwife was used to seeing in women of those times.