At Play in The Fields of The Lord - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Vincent Canby, film critic for The New York Times, had mixed feelings about the film but did like the acting and the screenplay, and wrote, "At Play in the Fields of the Lord doesn't play smoothly, but it often plays well...Mr. Lithgow and Miss Hannah, who grows more secure as an actress with every film, are fine in complex roles that are exceptionally well written...Though the film features a spectacular penultimate sequence, it seems not to know how to end. It sort of drifts away, perhaps trying to soften its own well-earned pessimism."

Critic Roger Ebert had read the novel and believed the film is true to its themes. Ebert makes the case that producer Saul Zaentz has a history of producing "unfilmable" source material. In an article that basically reviews the plot, he wrote, "Watching it, we are looking at a morality play about a world in which sincere people create unwitting mischief so that evil people can have their way. The movie essentially argues that all peoples have a right to worship their own gods without interference, but it goes further to observe that if your god lives in the land and the trees, then if we destroy your land, we kill your god. These messages are buried in the very fabric of the film, in the way it was shot, in its use of locations, and we are not told them, we absorb them."

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 50% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on six reviews.

Director and producer James Cameron stated that At Play in the Fields of the Lord was used as a reference for the 2009 blockbuster film Avatar.