Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Sally Field left us all besotted with her performance in Remarkably Bright Creatures while also picking up another piece of history while she was at it. At 79, she became the oldest winner of the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Six decades into a career and still picking up major trophies? Apparently, it’s not just the creatures that are “remarkably bright”!

Of course, anyone who has followed her career knows this is hardly a late-life miracle pulled out of a hat. Norma Rae won her an Oscar, Places in the Heart won her another, and Steel Magnolias showed how much feeling she could wring from a scene. Then came Lincoln, with Field returning to the Academy Awards conversation decades after her first win.

There has always been steel under the warmth with her, and that combination is precisely why Not Without My Daughter remains such a difficult entry in her filmography. Put it on after Remarkably Bright Creatures, and, well, talk about the unexpected change of lane.

Not Without My Daughter came from Betty Mahmoody’s 1987 memoir, written with William Hoffer, and the film presents events through her account.

Field plays Betty Mahmoody, an American woman married to Iranian-born physician Moody Mahmoody, played by Alfred Molina. Moody persuades Betty to take their daughter, Mahtob, to Iran for what he refers to as a brief family visit. Betty is wary from the outset, but she agrees.

Before you know it, the supposed two-week trip reaches its expiry date, and Moody reveals that there will be no flight home. They are staying. Full stop. A family trip becomes a family trap.

And then you witness the sickening disappearance of basic freedom to the level where it’s suffocating, claustrophobic, and even both physically and mentally. Once a loving husband, Moody turns into a controlling and abusive husband. Betty soon realises that she has very little to no authority over her own movements. She could contemplate escape alone, perhaps, but abandoning Mahtob is unthinkable.

So she begins looking for a way out while knowing that one loose word or one person losing their nerve could bring the whole house of cards crashing down.

Sally Field didn’t play Minty as some superwoman who woke one day and decided to take everything by storm. She looked knackered and frightened. At times, she looks completely out of her depth. But she fought and showed us that survival can be freaking exhausting.

Fun fact: the movie was not actually filmed in Iran but in Israel, and its depiction of Iranian society drew substantial criticism on release. Detractors argued that the country and Islam were too often reduced to repression and hostility, with very little room for contradiction. Watching it now, you can see why that criticism stuck.

The atmosphere around the film was combustible off-screen as well. Sally Field received threats connected with the movie and hired personal security after receiving government advice. That alone tells you how politically sensitive the whole affair had become by the time the film was released in 1991.

In fact, it came amid fraught American perceptions of Iran and the wider Middle East, with the Gulf crisis already turning the temperature up several notches. No wonder the film became a lightning rod.

Not Without My Daughter was never just an escape thriller. It has various aspects attached to it, from misogyny to troubled politics, and watching it after Remarkably Bright Creatures only shows you the contrast and range of Sally Field. The woman can play both protector and provider!