In His Steps: A Quiet, Dusty Lesson in Farm Life

Is it worth the watch?

If you like movies that feel like a Sunday afternoon spent in an attic looking through old photo albums, you might get a kick out of In His Steps. It’s not for the action crowd, that’s for sure. If you’re allergic to 1930s melodrama or characters who are a little too earnest for their own good, skip it. Everyone else? It’s a decent time-capsule of a film.

The whole premise is basically: rich kids elope, get kicked out, and realize farming is really, really hard. It’s simple. Maybe a little too simple at times. You see the conflict coming from a mile away, but that’s kind of the point, right?

Observations from the dirt

There’s a specific kind of lighting in these older films—everything looks just a little bit dusty, even when they’re inside. I spent way too much time wondering how they kept their clothes that clean while working in the fields. It’s one of those movie-logic things you just have to ignore.

Cecilia Parker is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. She has this way of looking worried that feels very genuine, like she’s actually calculating how much bread they can buy with their last few coins. Sometimes, the dialogue gets a little preachy. It reminded me a bit of the heavy-handedness you find in something like Sons of Steel, where the message is basically shouted at you.

• The scene where they first see the farmhouse is almost funny because of how obviously miserable the place looks.
• I’m pretty sure the cow in the background of the barn scene was bored. It kept looking directly into the camera lens.
• The parents are so cartoonishly mean that it’s hard not to laugh a little.

I found myself drifting off during the longer conversations about values and hard work. It’s nice sentiment, sure, but it slows the whole thing down to a crawl. You can almost feel the movie checking its watch to see if it’s said enough important things yet.

Still, there’s a warmth to it. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s not trying to be. It’s just trying to tell a story about two people who are out of their depth. Sometimes that’s enough to keep me watching until the credits roll. 🌾

It definitely lacks the strange, offbeat energy of something like Strange Birds, but it’s got its own steady rhythm. If you like your dramas quiet and your endings predictable, you’ll be just fine here.