We drift back to the '70s for a pair of sociological studies, one famous, one more obscure.
GREY GARDENS (1976) (A) - The gold standard of fly-on-the-wall filmmaking established the Maysles brothers -- Albert and David -- as the premier documentarians of the American New Wave and beyond. HBO Max is streaming this fascinating examination of the eccentric mother-daughter tandem -- cousins of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy living in squalor in a rundown mansion in the Hamptons. Edith Bouvier Beale (Big Edie), 80, and her middle-aged daughter, known as Little Edie, seem both skeptical of the film crew and a bit flattered by the attention.
It is easy to gloss over how cutting edge it was to let the cameras roll and let the two women spill their thoughts ad nauseam -- a true reality show decades before YouTube and TikTok made stars of ordinary people thirsting for attention and celebrity status. Yet, there is no sense that the Maysles are exploting the women or mocking them. They are merely presenting them.
Big Edie, mostly bed-ridden, is eccentric but not addled. She celebrates her former singing career, which featured operatic pop stylings once featured on 78-speed records. Little Edie likes to dance for the camera and bicker with her mother. She also tends to the many cats on the premises, and she even feeds the raccoons in the attic (Wonder Bread and Cat Chow). She indulges her mother's constant nostalgia trips.
Little Edie was a classic debutante who never married, and she still maintains her looks, albeit a bit weather-beaten. She wears unique fashions, especially the head coverings (we never see her hair -- or lack of hair), which sometimes are sweaters imaginatively fashioned into bandannas. She flirts with the young man who visits on occasion.
The Maysleses can't help but get caught up in the proceedings, and we sometimes see them (or their shadows or reflections) in a stray frame. (They share credit with Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer and Susan Froemke.) Little Edie addresses the brothers and curries favor with them, as if the presence of cameras have revived her reason to live. There is no real narrative arc, and when the cameras disappear, you wonder what will happen to the chattering mother and daughter.
GOD'S COUNTRY (1985) (B) - Famous French filmmaker Louis Malle ("Atlantic City," "Pretty Baby," "My Dinner With Andre") also made documentaries, including this study, for PBS, of a small town 60 miles west of Minneapolis and its heartland inhabitants. He shot it in 1979 and adds a coda, filmed six years later, for the final 20 minutes.
The era seems stuck in amber, mostly German descendants tending to their gardens, their farms and their families. Few of the subjects are very interesting, and Malle is overly sympathetic to their ordinary lives. One woman, in her 30s, stands out in a long dialogue about her comfort with living single in a community that emphasizes church and marriage.
A couple of farmers are doing pretty well in 1979, but when the film jumps to 1985 -- the year that Farm Aid debuted -- their struggles are more acute. One has a wife who takes a job to bring in more income; he has started a college fund for his three children, because he predicts no more than 10 years left as a business proposition on the farm. Another farmer tries to make peace with bachelorhood while inseminating thousands of cows per year.
Malle's reverence for these noble Americans can be a bit off-putting. While the lifestyle depicted seems simple and quaint, there is a tinge of sadness to this colorless community. The coda drives home the idea that very little has changed for these residents -- and nothing much likely will.
No comments:
Post a Comment