Based on a novel by Southeast alum Billie Letts, the movie Where the Heart Is follows the journey into maturity of a young girl named Novalee Nation, played by Natalie Portman. Novalee begins the movie in a Wal-Mart, having her baby there in a hardware aisle after having been abandoned by the baby’s father.
Natalie Portman does a tremendous job in this film, displaying true talent in showing us Novalee’s growth over the course of the next five years from a naive and worried girl into an intelligent woman who has found true happiness. Her evolution is
subtle, displayed in her mannerisms, her speech, and even in her wardrobe. In early scenes she is unkempt, nervous, and dispirited; by the end of the film, she has somehow achieved
grace and wisdom, a feat that we have watched her accomplish every step of the way.
The rest of the cast rises to the level of excellence Portman portrays. Novalee first finds a home and true friends when she is taken in by Sister Husband, an older, off-the wall spiritual woman played by Stockard Channing. She and Novalee’s best friend Lexie, a nurse’s aide played by Ashley Judd who Novalee befriends after giving birth, both exhibit a down-to-earth charm that makes Novalee, and the audience, feel more comfortable.
But while the emotional scope of the movie and its characters hit home with the audience, the story strings us along through scenes that are only loosely connected to any larger framework. Some of these incidents seem to have been included for no reason, and
they don’t advance the plot at all. In one scene, for example, Lexie receives a beating from an abusive boyfriend, and Novalee comes to her rescue. Plot-wise, this scene served no real purpose, other than to serve as an opportunity for developing Lexie’s character further. Both that development and the strengthening of the relationship between Lexie and Novalee because of this scene could easily have happened under different, less overtly dramatic circumstances.
Other important parts of the story are handled poorly because we are never associated with the action or emotion. We are told these events occured, rather than actually getting to see them on screen. The birth of Novalee’s daughter Americus just sort
of happens between scenes, so the audience doesn’t really get to participate in any of the sensations of the incident. The same can be said of the death of a major character, and the aforementioned beating of Lexie. All of these events happen without the audience visually receiving the details, and thus the audience can only guess at the empathy these scenes generated for the characters.
The story straggles along, because the director tried to be too faithful to the book. A novel can pace a story slowly, develop it over the course of five years, but a film needs to be much more narrow in scope. The film suffers because it tries to be too broad, to encompass too much. In the end, even though the film’s acting and character work are top-notch, the story weighs it down too heavily to make it truly memorable.
