What a quiet and moving film Tender Mercies (1983) is. It sneaks up on you, you are lulled into the solitary life of Rosa Lee (played by Tess Harper), a young widow who runs a little motel and gas station in the middle of nowhere Texas. The landscape tells you what you need to know, her life is as empty as the fields that surround her run down motel, with only the two lane highway bisecting them. We meet Mac (played by Robert Duvall) as Rosa Lee and her young son, Sonny, do through a loud drunken fight he is having in one of her motel rooms. They stand on their porch and listen to the violence and shudder together, and you realize all you need to know, they are alone, a young mom and her young son, out in this barren landscape. Mac gets knocked out, passes out and eventually awakes alone and broke.

Horton Foote, a playwright who wrote the screenplay, never explains the fight, never tell us who Mac was fighting with, or why they were fighting. And that’s the point of the movie right there, things happen in life to bring us to people or situations and we don’t know why. Bruce Beresford, the Australian director, paces this film slowly. Mac emerges from his room, broke and strikes a deal with Rosa Lee. He’ll work off what he owes her, she says fine, as long as he doesn’t drink while he’s working. He sticks around, he stops drinking, they fall in love. Most of this happens off screen, Beresford and Foote just give you vignettes as they story progresses. Mac and Rosa Lee marry and you sense they are happy in their quiet life. He proposes to her while they are working in their little garden after he announces to her that he hasn’t taken a drink in two months, something you sense is monumental.

As the film progresses we learn more about Mac’s past. He had been a famous country singer, married to Dixie, another famous singer played by Betty Buckley. They have a daughter he hasn’t seen in eight years. Back then Mac hadn’t been a good man, he drank, he beat Dixie and almost killed her once. It becomes clear that this new life, his new peaceful life with the serene Rosa Lee is Mac’s path to redemption. He writes another song, a sweet song that is clearly about Rosa Lee that goes: “If you hold the ladder, I’ll climb to the top.”

That’s what I really liked about this movie. You know that song is about Rosa Lee, but they never tell you it is. You know that Mac is rebuilding his life, that he has transformed from the alcoholic beast he was before to this kind husband and father, but they don’t put lights around it and shove it down your throat. Mac begins talking to his daughter again and sticks his toe back in the business, he records his new song with a young band and it is getting radio play. When they perform it at a small dance hall, you know it’s a good song because everyone gets up and dances, and the smile on Mac’s face as he Texas two-steps Rosa Lee around the dance floor afterward tell you everythingng you need to know.

Duvall is phenomenal, this is the role for which he has his only Oscar. Not only acting, but he sings all the songs and even wrote some of them. The rest of the cast is fantastic too, including Wilfred Brimley (who doesn’t love that guy?) and a very young Ellen Barkin as Mac’s daughter. The film wasn’t received well when it was released but it has been loved by critics since and is on many “Must See” lists.

Finally, at the end something bad happens that threatens to derail Mac’s path. He is back in the garden questioning why do good things happen and why do bad things happen. I’ve failed to mention the deep vein of spirituality that runs through this film. Early in the film, Rosa Lee takes Mac to church with her where she sings in the choir. Eventually he is baptized in that church. And now at the end you know he is talking to God: why am I alive when others are not? Why am I here? Why did I end up drunk and broken in that motel room where I met Rosa Lee and she saved my life? He says to Rosa Lee: “I’ve never trusted happiness.” And she just listens to him and eventually leaves him in the garden. But it’s the little things, I think, that Foote wants us to remember. It’s like knowing you are here but for the grace of God.  In one scene Rosa Lee says to Mac: “I say my prayers for you and when I thank the Lord for his tender mercies, you and Sonny are at the head of the list.” And there you go, be thankful for the tender mercies, because the rest can never be known.