Where the Heart Is (2000)

Number Rolled: 57

Movie Name/Year: Where the Heart Is (2000)

Genre: Drama

Length: 119 minutes

Rating: PG-13

Director: Matt Williams

Writer: Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel, Billie Letts

Actors: Natalie Portman, James Frain, Ray Prewitt, Laura House, Ashley Judd, Mackenzie Fitzgerald, Sally Field, Stockard Channing, Joan Cusack, Dylan Bruno

It’s after 6am, I have yet to sleep and I STILL don’t regret staying up to watch this movie.

“Where the Heart Is” is an almost karmatic look at the lives of two people whose stories begin together, but then move off to separate roads. Natalie Portman’s character – Novalee – and Dylan Bruno’s character – Will Jack – start off leaving their trailer park in an 80 dollar car and heading to California where he hopes to make it big. They stop at a Walmart in the middle of nowhere so the very pregnant Novalee can use the bathroom and he proceeds to abandon her. And that’s just how the movie starts – the first ten to fifteen minutes.

There are a number of things I love about this movie; most important is just how life-like it is. We are taught, from a young age, to believe that good people have good things happen and bad people have bad things happen. Everyone alive, once they reach a certain age, knows that’s not entirely true. Every action must have an equal and opposite reaction – two sides of the coin. The movie is almost random in its sequencing – but not in a disorganized way. It’s random in the way that life is random. In the way that every breath we take can change our entire life and perspective.

The people we see at the beginning of the film are not the same people we see at the end. Circumstances have changed them – for better or worse.

This is a drama the way drama is supposed to be made. Unpredictable and heart-wrenching… and beautiful.

Overall Opinion – 5/5