Editing Places in the Heart (section)

==Production==
{{Anchor|Writing}}
Regarding the unique ending, writer-director Robert Benton explained why he ended an otherwise realistic movie with a fantasy scene incorporating equality, grace and forgiveness, tenets of Christianity:

"There are certain things images can explain that words cannot. There is something in the image of the man who has been killed handing the communion plate to the boy who killed him that seems very moving to me in ways I cannot explain. I had the ending before I ever finished the screenplay, although I knew audiences would be confused by it."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/08/movies/how-endings-have-affected-two-recent-movies.html |title=How Endings Have Affected Two Recent Movies|work=[[New York Times]]|date=October 8, 1984|access-date=September 7, 2021}}</ref>