TENDER MEMORIES OF MERCIES SHOWN

If I were to nominate my favourite film of all time, it would be Bruce Beresford's "Tender Mercies" from 1983, a film I must have seen now about 30 or 40 times since its initial release.

I would not argue it as the best film ever made, as such arguments are only for the stupid to puddle about in, but, for me, watching it is akin to slipping into a warm bath after a ragged day of listening to, and reading about, the bizarre obsessions of the multitude of imbeciles we seem forever besieged by.

Robert Duvall won an Academy Award as Best Actor for his portrayal of Mac Sledge. The rest of the cast are faultless, not a false note struck, no mawkish slips into cheap sentimentality, no displays of flappy histrionics, no "acting" in other words.

Horton Foote wrote the screenplay. He, too, won an Academy Award for his work.

Mr. Foote died on March 4, 2009 ...

Mr. Foote, in a 1986 interview in The New York Times Magazine, said: “I believe very deeply in the human spirit and I have a sense of awe about it because I don’t know how people carry on. What makes the difference in people? What is it? I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them, to kill them, to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don’t ask quarters.”

His inspiration came from the people he knew and the stories he heard growing up there. “I’ve spent my life listening,” Mr. Foote once said.

And my life has been made far better by listening to him. Thank you.