midnight
in the garden
of good and evil |
director
Clint Eastwood
screenwriter
John Lee
Hancock
based on
the book by
John Berendt
producers
Clint Eastwood
Arnold Stiefel
cinematographer
Jack N. Green
music
Johnny Mercer
Lennie Niehaus
editor
Joel Cox
cast
John Cusack (John Kelso)
Kevin Spacey (Jim Williams)
Jack Thompson (Sonny Seiler)
Irma P. Hall (Minerva)
Jude Law (Billy Hanson)
Alison Eastwood (Mandy Nichols)
Paul Hipp (Joe Odom)
The Lady Chablis (Herself)
Kim Hunter (Betty Harty)
Geoffrey Lewis (Luther Driggers)
Bob Gunton (Finley Largent)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 155m
u.s.
release: 11/21/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other clint
eastwood films
reviewed on this website:
- absolute
power
- blood
work
- million
dollar baby
- mystic
river
- space
cowboys
- true
crime
- unforgiven
|
Over
the past decade or so -- dating back to Pale Rider and
Bird -- Clint Eastwood has developed a moody and meditative
style that can be immensely satisfying. Eastwood trusts us to
be adults, to sit still and relax into a narrative. Yet his deliberate
style only works when he gives us ambiguities and complexities
to savor, as in Unforgiven.
A slow pulp movie like Eastwood's Absolute
Power merely seems slow, giving us too much time to pick
at the plot threads.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is certainly not
pulp, and it might be more disreputable fun if it were
pulp. The movie is based on John Berendt's bestseller, which
reads like a shot; if Berendt had written his book the way Eastwood
has directed the film, nobody would've gotten past the first
chapter. A flamboyant director like Kenneth Branagh might have
captured the juicy vitality of the book. Eastwood dries everything
out, telling the basic story at a snail's pace.
Berendt narrated his book as a detached outsider and observer
drawn into the local color of Savannah, Georgia. Eastwood and
scripter John Lee Hancock (who previously collaborated on A
Perfect World) replace Berendt with the fictional John Kelso
(John Cusack), a writer doing a story for Town and Country
about the legendary Christmas party thrown by local antiques
dealer Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey). The Kelso character has been
given a more active role than Berendt had in the book, but Cusack
never quite registers; he seems to be floating around the margins
of the movie.
Spacey, the best reason to see Midnight, gives his usual
suave, effortless performance as the mysterious Williams. Williams,
it seems, is having an affair with a mercurial young stud named
Billy Hanson (Gattaca's
Jude Law, who makes a vivid impression in his few scenes). One
night, a drunk and hot-headed Billy visits Williams in his study;
they have an argument that leaves Billy shot to death on Williams'
Persian rug.
Was it self-defense or outright murder? That was the mystery
that held Berendt's local-color anecdotes together. The film
compresses Williams' four trials into one and retains a few of
the book's odd characters, including a guy who ties flies to
his clothes (Geoffrey Lewis), an elderly voodoo woman (Irma P.
Hall), and the flashy drag queen Lady Chablis, who plays herself
-- a little of her goes a very long way. Boy, get a load of all
these quirky people! The movie is sometimes like a Letterman
sketch about weirdos stretched out over two and a half hours.
Eastwood had more success with a group of misfits in his Bronco
Billy, a fine movie that suggested he could adapt Berendt's
difficult-to-adapt book.
Why couldn't he, then? Maybe nobody could have; some material
simply works better on the page than on the screen. Eastwood
gets points for trying, but Midnight in the Garden of Good
and Evil lacks dramatic power and focus; it's one long ramble
surrounding a routine courtroom drama, meandering and, finally,
boring. It asks whether we can really know the truth -- a question
asked and answered brilliantly in Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon,
a far better film and, God knows, far shorter. |
