Directed by: Alan Parker
Starring: Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand, Kevin Dunn, Brad Dourif, Gailard Sartain, R. Lee Ermey, Stephen Tobolowsky, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Michael Rooker
Alan Parker's recent death brings back memories of two of his best films, Fame and Mississippi Burning. Their plots and milieus are as dissimilar as can be, but both movies contain a theme of outsiders treading into uncharted and frightening territory. In Fame, the freshman year students at New York's prestigious High School of the Performing Arts are hopeful, but terrified of failure. In Mississippi Burning, the outsiders are federal agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in 1964 rural Mississippi. The agents feel as much trepidation as the citizens of the small town they descend upon to find out what happened. Blacks in town are outsiders even though they have been living there their entire lives. The whites, at least most of them, are fearful of the government interfering with their way of life and would like the agents to exit ASAP.
We meet agents Rupert Anderson (Hackman) and Alan Ward (Dafoe), who come from different backgrounds and approach the job differently. Anderson is a Southerner who once was a sheriff in a town like this one. He knows how the people think, and how to disarm them with some good-ole-boy charm. Ward is a by-the-book fed whose manner causes people to avoid him. He believes he is on a mission to change things, and wonders aloud why the townsfolk can't see that. But, he is running the investigation and believes in doing things his way, until a crucial moment in the film when he understands he must abandon his stubborn methods to get to the truth, and hold the killers accountable.
Based on a true story, it comes as no surprise the three missing civil rights workers were murdered and found dead in a swamp. The local KKK does little to conceal its disdain for blacks and for the agents' presence. Like the mafia, there are the bosses, like sheriff Ray Stuckey (Sartain) and local KKK grand wizard Clayton Townley (Tobolowsky), and the cronies like Deputy Pell (Dourif), whose abused wife (McDormand) does not share her husband's views on race relations or much else. Anderson and Ward theorize that the local authorities picked up the workers and delivered them to the KKK to be killed. Anderson thinks Mrs. Pell can poke holes in her husband's alibi because he senses the good in her; the willingness to finally stand up against the racism she has witnessed all her life. Anderson plays her at first, but soon falls in love with her, and she with him, to an extent.
While the investigation rolls on, Mississippi Burning captures the overall atmosphere of fear which pervades the town and its black citizens. The essence of racism is prevalent everywhere. The black characters are terrorized, living under a cloud of potential lynching and death at every turn. Churches are burned to the ground. In one sad, terrifying, and revealing scene, the local KKK thugs burn a church and attack its parish. A young boy falls to his knees and prays, hoping the violence would cease as mayhem ensues around him. He is soon kicked in the head by a Klansman, showing us there is no depth to which the perpetrators wouldn't stoop.
Mississippi Burning is violent, yes, because 1964 Mississippi was a violent place. But there is also a slight sense of hope that things will change. Have they changed? In some ways yes, and in other ways no. Jim Crow laws are no longer on the books, but still far too many people act as if they still exist in spirit. The performances, especially Hackman's and McDormand's (both Oscar-nominated), are universally excellent. Mississippi Burning not only works mercilessly as a procedural and a thriller, but as a document depicting a time not very long ago where minorities were openly terrorized and others turned a blind eye to such.
No comments:
Post a Comment