Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Oh wow. It took me years to finish watching this movie (although this is nothing compared to the Decalogue which I have partially rewatched and am still thinking of very often, or Inland Empire which is another film I cannot get myself to see in its entirety), but “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” is just particularly painful. For the first hour or so, probably the most boring movie I have ever seen in my life, except for Kevin Spacey’s lovely display of arrogance and John Cusack’s oblivious character. If this is the movie about Savannah, or even the South, then it tells you a novel about how soporific it must be.
Okay, maybe the South is not exciting, and maybe it is funny to make in-breed jokes about them (just thinking about it makes me want to laugh, though I have personal reasons for that), but there is a charm to this place which I have visited several times, and it’s not that people are eccentric and strange, but that they are – most of all – very welcoming.
Amazingly enough, the second half of this way too dragged out film was surprisingly better. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I care for what happened, or what the truth really was – because whatever turned out at the end did not warrant a 2+ hour film nor somebody spending their whole life following them and writing a bestseller out of it. What made the second part bearable was the simple fact that the happenings at least pointed towards something – the resolution to the film, that is. I thought it gave the film a rather interesting end and a twist that has been there all the time. I also like how that twist ended up being indeed on the verge between good and evil. But that highly praised first part of the film, especially its strange characters and whatnot, is probably much better in the forms of a book, where such things can be detailed out and actually feel alive. Instead we are served a lukewarm, pointless not-really-love story and encounter a bunch of characters who, except for Lady Chablis, do absolutely nothing in the film.
I wish Savannah – or any other city in the world – had a better film to represent them, and I am glad to get it over with. This film is largely a waste of time, unless you have some explicable reason to watch it. (A strange fascination for Kevin Spacey perhaps? I couldn’t fault you on that.)