Flickchart Road Trip: Georgia
Welcome to the latest installment of Flickchart Road Trip, in which I’m starting in Los Angeles and “driving” across country, watching one movie from each state and posting about it once a week. The new movie I watch will go up against five movies from that state I’ve already seen, chosen from five distinct spots on my own Flickchart. Although I won’t tell you where the new movie actually lands in my chart (I don’t like to add new movies until I’ve had a month to think about them), I’ll let you know how it fared among the five I’ve chosen. Thanks for riding shotgun!
With Georgia, I hit my first state where I have family. (My grandmother on my mother’s side used to live in Texas, but that was many years ago.) My dad’s sister, her husband, my two female cousins, their husbands and their combined three daughters all live in Atlanta. I’ve only met one of the three daughters, who are my first cousins once removed, according to the interwebs. So I was looking forward to meeting some new family members in addition to a lot of catching up — I haven’t seen any of these folks since my wedding nearly five years ago. Amazing how life gets so busy when you have kids and responsibilities. (Not so busy that I can’t take a year off from my job and family to go on this road trip, apparently.)
After some yummy home-cooked meals (I’ve been missing those), plenty of updates on our lives, and a night on the town with my cousins where the grandparents babysat, I was ready to set out to my second Georgia destination: Savannah. Having been there on a business trip in 2010, I fell in love with the place, even after only a single night in the city. I was seduced by the combination of the ever-present willow trees and the city’s unique neighborhood configuration, which involves a series of town squares filled with 19th century homes and other buildings. Just imagine trying to draw yourself away from a place like this:
I’d ridden into Atlanta on I-75 north, but rode out on I-16 heading southeast to get to Savannah. (Savannah also gives me an easy entry point into my next state, South Carolina). Instead of seeing a specific tourist attraction, I used my time in Savannah just to sit on benches like the one you see in the lower right of this picture, taking in the beautiful weather, the gorgeous surroundings, and a couple hundred pages of a good book. I had one rule: After an hour was up in a particular location, I sought out a new one, just to take in every possible nook and cranny of this grand old place.
The grand old place in question is the subject of my Georgia movie, Clint Eastwood‘s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997, global ranking: #2508). Why did I want to see Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, when the general consensus is that it was a misfire? Because it’s set in Savannah, of course.
What it’s about
Writer John Kelso (John Cusack) is sent by Town & Country magazine to cover the Christmas party of a popular Savannah socialite, Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey). The moment Kelso steps off the plane from New York, he starts noticing the eccentricities of this Georgia town: the man who walks an invisible dog, the kooky woman who brings a loaded gun to parties, the strange gentleman who wears horsefly epaulets. The most scandalous event is waiting for Kelso at the party, however, when Williams shoots a young drunken male friend (Jude Law) after an argument. Williams claims the shooting was self defense, but the gossipy city begins to wonder when it becomes clear that the previously closeted Williams had a homosexual relationship with the man. As both a witness to the events leading up to the shooting, and an author who can sniff out good material for a book, Kelso stays in town as the trial gets underway, growing closer to a lounge singer (Alison Eastwood) and a preoperative transsexual/drag queen (Lady Chablis).
How it uses the state
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is all about its location. You might call it a love letter to Savannah. What it has to say about the state of Georgia on the whole is uncertain, but every other line of dialogue seems to be some kind of remark on Savannah and/or Savannahians. A couple choice examples: “Saving face in the light of unpleasant circumstances: It’s the Savannah way.” “I’ve lived here a long time. I believe most anything about anyone.” “This place is fantastic. It’s like Gone With the Wind on mescaline. They walk imaginary pets here, and they’re all heavily armed and drunk.”
What it’s up against
Before we get to my thoughts on the film, let’s duel it against five other Georgia movies I’ve already seen, shall we? As you know if you’ve ever added a film to Flickchart using the “By Title” feature, the new movie goes up first against the movie in the exact middle of your rankings. The outcome of that duel determines whether it faces the film at the 75th percentile or the 25th percentile, and so on, until it reaches its exact right place. With five movies, that means at least two and as many as three duels. Here are the films Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil will battle:
1) Gone With the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming). My Flickchart: #331/3478. Global: #397. I’m not sure how much I actually “give a damn” about this movie, at least considering where I have it ranked. I watched it for the only time while snowed in during spring break in college — just about 19 years ago to the day — when a friend wanted to show it to me. I clearly remember it feeling like an arduous, lengthy undertaking. I also remember, however, being at least intellectually aware that it was a really astonishing achievement, as you might expect from the film that (I believe) would still be the highest grossing of all time if you adjusted for inflation. The Civil War epic to end all Civil War epics uses the fictional plantation called Tara (located about 20 miles from Atlanta) as the point from which it regularly jumps off and returns, and it’s where Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) gives Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) probably the greatest kiss-off in film history. Well, at least “tomorrow is another day.”
2) Deliverance (1972, John Boorman). My Flickchart: #442/3478. Global: #497. If the words “squeal like a pig” are going through your head right now, don’t be surprised. Deliverance was responsible for not one but two moments that went on to gain pop culture notoriety, the other being the dueling banjos scene between Ronny Cox and one of the most disturbing inbred teenagers you’ve ever seen. The movie practically commodified city folks’ fear of rednecks, as the unsavory hicks presented here seem capable of anything, making them especially frightening adversaries. Just like the newly shower-phobic viewers of Psycho and the newly shark-phobic viewers of Jaws, audiences coming out of Deliverance made a clear mental note never to go on a canoeing trip in the northern Georgia woods. Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Jon Voight play Cox’ companions, fighting a sweaty and desperate battle for survival.
3) ATL (2006, Chris Robinson). My Flickchart: #1918/3478. Global: #22191. Music video director Chris Robinson brings a crisp visual style to his feature debut, a coming-of-age story of Atlanta youths hanging out and trying to avoid trouble, which functions a bit like an urban Dazed and Confused. Like Roll Bounce, which came out the year before, it focuses on the culture that springs up around a local roller rink, and the popping colors of that environment suffuse the whole production design. Rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris, who previously collaborated with Robinson on one of his videos, holds down the lead role effectively in his film debut. Although it does touch on some hot-button issues with which modern African-American teens must regrettably grapple, ATL mostly remains as light on its feet as the skaters, and it sure brought a smile to my face.
4) Meet the Browns (2008, Tyler Perry). My Flickchart: #2318/3478. Global: #34608. Georgia is Tyler Perry country, and since I’ve seen a half-dozen of his films, I can’t rightly drive through without listing one here. Meet the Browns is not one of his best or most memorable (though it did inspire a TV series), but I felt a fondness toward it because of the performance of Angela Bassett, playing a Chicago single mother of a rising basketball star. She brings her son to Georgia to attend her estranged father’s funeral, where she gets a taste not only of the eccentric family she doesn’t know, but also of the healing powers of life away from the big city. My interest in this film was also piqued by the presence of former NBA star Rick Fox, who played on my Boston Celtics eons ago, and turns out to be a credible actor. I might like it better were it not for the superfluous final scene, a tonally discordant high-speed police chase involving Perry’s Madea character (who had not previously appeared in the film).
5) The Dukes of Hazzard (2005, Jay Chandrasekhar). My Flickchart: #2996/3478. Global: #8871. For a second straight state, a failed adaptation of a 1980s TV show takes my bottom spot. Both Miami Vice and The Dukes of Hazzard have about the same amount to offer — which is to say some, but not much. Chandrasekhar was presumably tapped as director to bring some of his Broken Lizard zaniness to the proceedings, but none of that comes across. In fact, so boring is the Hazzard County created by screenwriter John O’Brien that the script takes a lengthy detour to Atlanta, for no other purpose than to switch up stuff that isn’t working. Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville are too hipster by half to play Bo and Luke Duke, and a few scenes play like rejects from Knoxville’s Jackass. Jessica Simpson does make something of an impression with her iconic cutoff jean shorts that bear the character’s name, and Burt Reynolds shows up on this list for the second time as a lifeless Boss Hogg.
First duel: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil vs. ATL. “ATL” makes for a hipper city nickname than “SAV.” ATL wins.
Second duel: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil vs. Meet the Browns. Lady Chablis looks a lot better in a dress than Tyler Perry, but Perry’s movie has more to offer overall. Meet the Browns wins.
Third duel: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil vs. The Dukes of Hazzard. The faux royals of Savannah are a lot more interesting than the faux dukes of Hazzard. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil wins.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil finishes fifth out of the six movies.
My thoughts
For a movie that does a lot of things right, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a curiously disappointing product. That tended to be the impression of fans who made John Berendt’s work of non-fiction a beloved New York Times bestseller, but everyone knows “the book is better” in most cases. Even without a read of Berendt’s book burdening my expectations, I still came away from this movie thinking “Is that all?” This movies takes 155 minutes to arrive at this lackluster version of “all.”
As purely a slice of (mildly exaggerated) Savannah life, Eastwood’s movie scores. The setting is given the loving showcase it deserves, and is populated with character types who feel true to the Savannah this movie is trying to show us. If that were all the movie set out to do, that would be fine, and it would have been a lot shorter. However, this is a murder mystery, at least in theory — it’s no mystery who did it, only whether events happened the way the accused says they did. So we should be sinking our teeth into drama, into mystery, rather than just nibbling at the edges of plot points that don’t really go anywhere. One such plot point is a practitioner of voodoo who can commune with the dead, whose midnight cemetery gives the film its title. Another is Lady Chablis, who plays herself in the film, and who entertains the hell out of us every time she’s on screen, but ultimately has only a little to do with Jim Williams’ murder trial. The movie seems to go off on lengthy tangents involving Chablis, such as Kelso’s attendance at an African-American cotillion ball, which Chablis crashes. You expect at least one of the other local eccentrics to factor in significantly, especially the guy who is always threatening to dump poison into the local water supply. Other than being the jury foreman, however, his role is also indistinct. A late attempt to add a little drama falls flat and ends up feeling unintentionally comical.
The movie has a problem that a written work likely wouldn’t: It relies on Cusack’s character, the writer, to push the story forward. Despite befriending some of the key figures in the case, he’s a quintessential observer, without a clear goal other than to document the case for his book. (The character was based on Berendt.) As a protagonist, he doesn’t have a moment of bravery, a time when he has to stand up for something, when the stakes are at their highest. He’s just a viewer surrogate on a pleasant tour of Savannah, so it’s no surprise this is the only impression the movie leaves with its actual viewers.
Up next
On to the Carolinas! I’ll be crossing over from Savannah into South Carolina, and I plan to watch The Secret Life of Bees (2008, Gina Prince-Bythewood) … if only so I can figure out how to distinguish it from Bee Season (2005) and Akeelah and the Bee (2006).
