I really wanted to like JUNEBUG. I'm from the South and have family that're a lot like the folk in this movie...but it's deeply obvious this thing was made by males who really didn't understand women while the men were held to a level of silence that was supposed to be...I dunno...something Gary Cooperish in depth? The fact is, in my view these characters would have been caricatures and the story trite were it not for some damn fine casting.
The story is simple -- a young man making it good in the big city comes home with his new city wife...where she finds he's got a lot of family behind him and all of them are 180 degrees her opposite in sense and sensibility. There's the angry younger brother, the mother who ain't happy her perfect older son's married, the father who can't speak more than four words at a time, the perky pregnant wife of said younger brother, the "Church-meetin'-folk" (who thankfully were not cynically treated as fools, for once), the crazy backwoods artist bein' discovered, Grandma Moses-like, and of course the usual family tragedy that shakes up everyone.
Now as I said, I have no nits to pick with the acting; the taut intelligence of Embeth Davidtz, the bubbly-nervous insistence of Amy Adams, the grumbling wariness of Celia Weston, the painful silence of Scott Wilson, the quiet avoidance of Alessandro Nivola...and especially the inarticulate anger and fear of Benjamin McKenzie -- they made this movie work despite the pedestrian writing and adequate directing. Period.
Truly, it was the interaction between the actors that carried this story to the point of having any depth or meaning. Their background information is minimal -- did Johnny have to quit high school to marry Ashley because he got her pregnant? No idea...just a maybe. Were George and Ashley interested in each other at one time? No idea...just sort of kind of...maybe. Does George not go to church on Sundays in Chicago? Looks like a "no" on that...but it's not commented upon by his new wife. She's older than him...I think...so why'd they get married? Love? Perfect match? Horniness? Dunno, they just did after a quickie in her gallery. Madeline's a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it -- witness how she goes after George and the artist (whose work is horribly racist and homophobic but probably the truest thing in the movie) -- but she lets this secretive, demanding, uncommunicative boy-man tell her what she can and cannot do as they're getting ready to leave...all but silently lets him. Why, when it's so opposite to how her character's behaved up to this point?
Y'know, sometimes silence is NOT golden. For it to work in a story...in a film...it has to have context and be indicative of something other than just an unwillingness on the part of the storytellers to write what needs to be said. That the six above mentioned actors were able to imbue something meaningful into nothing is a testament to their abilities. Which is too bad; imagine what they could have done if Phil Morrison and Angus MacLaclan had given them honeysuckle to work with instead of kudzu.
The story is simple -- a young man making it good in the big city comes home with his new city wife...where she finds he's got a lot of family behind him and all of them are 180 degrees her opposite in sense and sensibility. There's the angry younger brother, the mother who ain't happy her perfect older son's married, the father who can't speak more than four words at a time, the perky pregnant wife of said younger brother, the "Church-meetin'-folk" (who thankfully were not cynically treated as fools, for once), the crazy backwoods artist bein' discovered, Grandma Moses-like, and of course the usual family tragedy that shakes up everyone.
Now as I said, I have no nits to pick with the acting; the taut intelligence of Embeth Davidtz, the bubbly-nervous insistence of Amy Adams, the grumbling wariness of Celia Weston, the painful silence of Scott Wilson, the quiet avoidance of Alessandro Nivola...and especially the inarticulate anger and fear of Benjamin McKenzie -- they made this movie work despite the pedestrian writing and adequate directing. Period.
Truly, it was the interaction between the actors that carried this story to the point of having any depth or meaning. Their background information is minimal -- did Johnny have to quit high school to marry Ashley because he got her pregnant? No idea...just a maybe. Were George and Ashley interested in each other at one time? No idea...just sort of kind of...maybe. Does George not go to church on Sundays in Chicago? Looks like a "no" on that...but it's not commented upon by his new wife. She's older than him...I think...so why'd they get married? Love? Perfect match? Horniness? Dunno, they just did after a quickie in her gallery. Madeline's a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it -- witness how she goes after George and the artist (whose work is horribly racist and homophobic but probably the truest thing in the movie) -- but she lets this secretive, demanding, uncommunicative boy-man tell her what she can and cannot do as they're getting ready to leave...all but silently lets him. Why, when it's so opposite to how her character's behaved up to this point?
Y'know, sometimes silence is NOT golden. For it to work in a story...in a film...it has to have context and be indicative of something other than just an unwillingness on the part of the storytellers to write what needs to be said. That the six above mentioned actors were able to imbue something meaningful into nothing is a testament to their abilities. Which is too bad; imagine what they could have done if Phil Morrison and Angus MacLaclan had given them honeysuckle to work with instead of kudzu.