The South is a cargo-heavy territory, full of ghosts and nonsense, and professionally performing Southerners who regularly lie to strangers, friends, and sometimes themselves.
I was born in a state that was part of the Confederacy, and I've lived there most of my life, and it's connected to the internet, there are box stores and chain restaurants, and everyone watches Netflix and Hulu and CNN and Fox. As connected as America is, we understand that things can slip. I wear my Southern identity like I wear a seersucker suit.
While affected snobbery can be an effective tactic for anyone with a platform to make their way into the public sphere, whether it's Lonesome Rose or Sheriff Andy Taylor, It can be uncomfortable. Professional Southerners have proliferated in certain businesses (including this one), injecting sentimentality and schmaltz, and harping on the common but complex humanity of those who happen to live below the Mason-Dixon line. I'm making it vague. The adjective “southern” is questionable and should never be applied to your work. It is both a sales pitch and a ghettoization plan.
However, I don't dislike southern movies. (Quentin Compson says, “I'm not. I'm not.”)
I dislike movies that present an idealized or reductive view of the South and its people. Movies such as “The Help,'' “Driving Miss Daisy,'' and “Green Book.''
Steel Magnolias, a film directed by Herbert Ross that I once hated, will be briefly released in theaters this week to commemorate its 35th anniversary, courtesy of Phantom Events and participating theaters. I remember when this movie came out in 1989, my reaction was so extreme that I decided not to write a review for it and instead delegated the chores to a female freelancer. came to the conclusion that this movie didn't like men and was ignorant about men. South.
As I remember, my main objection to “Steel Magnolias” was moral. I understood that the play was inspired by the true story of playwright Robert Harling's sister Susan, who died in 1985 from complications related to diabetes, but I found the idea cruel and exploitative. I felt that. (One of his blurbs used to promote the film was “The funniest movie that will make you cry.”)
That aside, I thought most of the southern accents attempted in this movie were terrible. Julia Roberts, from Smyrna, Georgia, outside Atlanta, was the worst offender, adopting a drop-R drawl that resembled Scarlett O'Hara more than anyone from northwest Louisiana. (Director Ross was reportedly particular about the accent.) Dolly Parton used a natural Appalachian accent, which was fine, but out of place for the character. Sally Field's accent tended to come and go, and only Shirley MacLaine (from Richmond, Virginia) consistently maintained a reliable and consistent accent.
I also resented the southern influence of the characters in this film. I also thought that Natchitoches, Louisiana (the town is called “Chinkapin” in the movie) and the town that was evoked in the movie were fake. Despite some great acting, especially by McClane and Olympia Dukakis, nothing about “Steel Magnolias” felt honest (and that's not the same as truth). Although the film is set in his '80s, in some ways it feels like it takes place in an idealized version of his '50s village.
I didn't grow up there like Harling, but I knew the town. I briefly considered going to college there, Northwestern State University (now officially known as Northwestern State University of Louisiana). I remember that the state high school school festival was once held there. After taking your calculus or French exam, buy one of the famous meat pies and walk along the river.
Natchitoches is a strange town. Although technically located in northwest Louisiana (actually as close to the state's geographic center as the Texas border), the area seems to have more East Texas influence than other parts of northwest Louisiana. I don't feel it. It was founded in 1714 by Canadian explorer Louis Juchereau de Saint-Denis as Europe's oldest permanent settlement within the boundaries of his 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and was occupied by French traders and Canadian immigrants. This is also because they have settled there. By the Creoles. Natchitoches looks and feels more like New Orleans than Shreveport.
Natchitoches was an important port until the 1830s, when the Red River changed course and left the city with a oxbow lake rather than a direct conduit to the Mississippi River, allowing East Texas cotton planters to transport their produce to New Orleans. I was using this place to do this.
It has been used in several movies, and one of the nearby cotton plantations was a key filming location for The Night Is Coming (2013). Reese Witherspoon made her film debut at the age of 14 in her 1991 film Man in the Moon, directed by Robert Mulligan, and the film was shot in and around the city. it was done.
But Cinquapin felt like the kind of southern town Disney's imagination envisioned for Epcot Center. It was gauzy and backlit, slightly scratched here and there, but not really dirty, just a typical Thomas Kinkade glitter town, with golden light shining here and there. Shiinu is a modified version of Natchitosh. Dressed for Hollywood.
In Herbert Ross's 1989 Steel Magnolias, neighbors and adversaries Whizzer (Shurlie MacLaine) and Drumm (Tom Skerritt) take on the challenge.
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“Steel Magnolias” begins on Shelby's (Roberts, post-“Mystic Pizza”, pre-“Pretty Woman”) wedding day, and Annelle Dupuis (Daryl Hannah), who graduated from beauty school on the same day. Arrives to take a job at “. Beauty salon glamor technician Truby Jones (Parton) storms out of her house. We watch as Annelle, arriving by bus, wanders the picturesque streets, Little Leaguers run en masse toward the park, and Shelby's father Drum (Tom Skerritt) chases a pigeon out of a tree with a pistol. .
Soon, Shelby and her mother Marin (Field) gather in Truby's drawing room to get her hair done in preparation for the ceremony. They meet Anel, who has a “past”. Although she's not sure if Annelle is married, she assures women that “personal tragedy will not affect my ability to make my hair look beautiful.”
While at Truvy's house, Shelby looks at herself in the salon mirror and almost faints. However, this feint at her pre-wedding anxiety is actually her falling into a hypoglycemic state, which is neutralized when Murin forces a glass of juice down her throat. Shelby has type 1 diabetes.
She's also a nurse and is probably an adult, but without the real-life tragedy underlying the story – Harling says she wrote the story that became the play and film “out of anger” – There may have been. She can't believe that she doesn't take better care of herself. Was it that difficult to monitor blood sugar levels in the 1980s?
I know diabetics who suffered from attacks like the one Shelby suffers in the movie. One person died because his condition could not be taken care of. But when the movie came out, I lacked that experience and it seemed silly for Shelby's character to take care of a baby in a hospital nursery.
The trip to Truvey's home also features Dukakis as Clerie Belcher, the widow of the town's former mayor, and McClain as Murin's grumpy neighbor “Weezer” Boudreau. The pair acts as a kind of Greek chorus to the proceedings, eliciting most of the best lines. When I first watched this movie, one thing I didn't want to take credit for was Harling's true talent for episodic one-liners. (For example, Clery's philosophy is, “What separates us from animals is our ability to accessorize.”)
Shelby soon marries Jackson (Dylan McDermott), a young lawyer who, like the men in this film, is pleasantly formal. She doesn't get much attention, even Sam Shepard as Spud, Truvey's contract worker husband. Hurling may have been justified in cutting all male roles. And soon, against her doctor's orders, she ends up pregnant (again, if Shelby wasn't based on her writer's too-young and deceased sister, one could have questioned her intelligence).
While both her husband and father are overjoyed at the prospect of Shelby having a child, Murrin understands that there is a strong chance that her daughter will die during childbirth. Turning to the Truvey family's women's court, they only make practical suggestions to keep Murrin out of her troubles. Shelby is determined to have children, so all she can do is “focus on the joy of this situation.”
In 1989, I was furious at this attitude. I understand now.
Eventually, Shelby gives birth to Jackson Jr., but soon begins to experience kidney failure. He turns one year old and she starts her dialysis. Murin donates her kidney and Shelby returns to her normal life. But 4 months later…
After 35 years, there is no need to issue a spoiler alert. Life goes on for everyone but Shelby. Annelle met her future husband at Shelby and Jackson's wedding reception on her first day in town, but she is currently pregnant. She promises to name her child after Shelby, whether it's a boy or a girl.
Truvy (Dolly Parton) and Claire (Olympia Dukakis) gossip in Steel Magnolias, which returns to theaters May 6 and May 8.
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It's definitely a melodrama.
And it is the kind of camp that Susan Sontag once defined as “so bad that it's good.'' That is, it is actually good, but it is good in a way that may not be understood by a sensibility that emphasizes literal values. “Steel Magnolias'' has a sense of playfulness that serious people miss, and the entire film is more akin to John Waters' 1990 musical comedy-romance “Cry-Baby'' than “Terms of Endearment.'' close.
And the work is often criticized, or at least labeled, as a “chick movie”, a “chick flick” peppered with minor jokes and inflated by the knowledge that it takes inspiration from real events. However, “Steel Magnolias” is a shadowy matriarchal social structure that runs society and provides support to marginalized people.
While I still have my doubts about executions, I'm familiar with how female friendships and power dynamics work, and from a clearly male perspective, “Steel Magnolias” It seems that you understand correctly. The women are able to lend strength to each other, and the relationships between characters of different ages and social classes feel fundamentally true.
That doesn't mean ignoring the flaws. Whatever takes you out of the movie takes you out of the movie. I don't like watching films that feign Southernness through bad accents or geographical insensitivity, such as the scene in 1969's True Grit when the Rocky Mountains loom on the horizon beyond the Dardanelles, but I'm not a fan of color-blind casting. is accepted. The stylized sets and dream logic of other films. Every line of “Steel Magnolia'' is interesting. In the end, that's reason enough to watch it.
In 1989, Roger Ebert wrote that the production was “willing to sacrifice overall impact for individual moments of humor, so there's not much to take home with us, but we have to hand it to them.” It must work at that moment.”
It would have been much more difficult in the past. But now I think that evaluation is almost perfect. “Steel Magnolias” isn't really a Southern movie. It's a Hollywood movie. And it's not a bad thing.
Email: pmartin@adgnewsroom.com
Screenwriter and playwright Robert Harling had a cameo in 1989's Steel Magnolias as a minister who marries Shelby (Julia Roberts) and Jackson (Dylan McDermott).
