Debuting feature film directors Karrie Crouse and Will Joines describe their cinematic inspirations for their first film, Hold Your Breath as a bit of Kubrick’s The Shining and The Others with the visual panache of Malick’s Days Of Heaven. After seeing the Searchlight film, which had its World Premiere as one of the Toronto Film Festival’s Special Presentations last month and will begin streaming on Hulu tomorrow, I thought more of another movie, now 40 years old. 1984’s Places In The Heart won Sally Field a second Oscar (“you really like me”) as a widow in 1930’s depression-era North Texas trying to survive the elements threatening her farm and her two young children.
I also thought a bit about the great Todd Haynes 1995 drama Safe with Julianne Moore hiding behind a gas mask to avoid the dangers in our environment. This film falls short of all the aforementioned, but is memorable enough to make an impression all its own. In Hold Your Breath, newly-minted Tony winner Sarah Paulson plays Margaret, a woman of the land, who is going it alone without her husband who has left to go look for work.
She is bringing up her two young daughters, 12 year old Rose ( Amiah Miller ) and 7 year old deaf child Ollie ( Alona Jane Robbins ) following the Scarlet Fever death of her other daughter, Ada. Set right in the heart of the Dust Bowl in 30’s Oklahoma (New Mexico stands in for the location), Margaret is battling nature’s elements of constant dust storms,not to mention f.