Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Acting
Spacek and Gibson's exhausted, lived-in marriage carries the whole film.
Practical Effects
They built a functional dam and flooded actual farmland. Insane.
Cinematography
The river becomes a hungry, devouring character.
Director
Mark Rydell
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was one of three farm-crisis dramas released in 1984 alongside Country and Places in the Heart.
The Garveys' impossible bind—scab work to save land, or lose everything—exposes how disaster capitalism preys on the desperate.
US
