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Big Springs, Nebraska | I stumbled on this movie (free on youtube) recently. Had never heard of it but it had a decent cast: Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard and Wilford Brimley. Guessing it was kind of overshadowed by the other farm movie that came out that same month "Places in the Heart".
To me, Country was sort of a nuts and bolts look at the 80's farm crisis through the eyes of an Iowan farm family headed by Brimley, his daughter (Lange) and her husband (Shepard). The bank, pressured by the FmHA, drops the hammer on them by calling their loans. It makes the bank look bad but also leaves some room for Shepard who apparently borrowed too much money in the previous years. It didn't look like they had made any huge capital expenditures like buildings or machinery so we're left to wonder how they got so deep on a "legacy" type farm like this one. They mentioned corn making 94 bu/ac and getting $2.80/bu and the banker told Shepard that he just wasn't a good enough farmer to make it. Even Brimley put the blame on the son-in-law saying that he never would have taken on that debt to begin with.
For those of you that have seen it, how well did it portray what life was like for a midwest corn farmer in 1984? Was it the FmHA that forced the banks (including Farm Credit) to call the loans of customers who were current on payments?
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Like to hear thoughts on 1984 farm movie "Country"
