Mississippi Burning. - movie reviews

National Review, March 10, 1989 by John Simon

SOME MOVIES, however defective, have success built into them. A picture such as Mississippi Burning, provided only that it does not shy a way from vio lence-which, Lord knows, it doesn't-cannot but make a killing. To see sheeted or unsheeted rednecks beating, burning, and lynching away is irresistible to viewers outside the South (and perhaps also inside), and pyromaniacs should get their money's worth from the plethora of burn ing homes, schools, and churches crumbling rafter by lingeredon rafter. And then there is the copsand-robbers story of how Ward, a prim FBI agent, and Anderson, a hearty former Mississippi sheriff, crack the murder case of three (here unnamed) civil-rights workers: the black James Chaney and the white Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

The film can be judged on three levels: as a thriller, as history, and as a human-interest story, what with the stiff Northerner Ward going strictly by the book and the easy-going downhome Anderson proceeding by folksy, unorthodox methods, as-once again! -two mismatched buddies come to respect and care about each other. For added human interest, there is even a platonic flirtation between Anderson and Mrs. Pell, a beautician and wife of Deputy Sheriff Pell, one of the men who murdered the civil-rights workers. It is Mrs. Pell who-at grave risk to herself, but because Anderson treats her so much better than her scurvy husband does-reveals the whereabouts of the three corpses, and so makes possible the victory of justice.

On the historic level, Mississippi Burning is mostly fabrication; for example, the way the FBI found the corpses was by paying an informant $30,000. Time was when such vital information cost only thirty pieces of silver, but 1,000 per cent inflation over two thousand years is understandable. If this remark sounds flip, let me say that thinking about this movie-as opposed to viewing it, when it is perfectly possible to get sucked ininvites flipness. Thus the film shows Southern blacks in 1964 as patient victims, a sea of angelically anonymous faces, not in the least involved in their own liberation. Equally unhistoric is the presence of blacks in the FBI at that time, and more besides.

As a human-interest story, the film is not appreciably better. Anderson's warmth is conveyed mostly by his treating Mrs. Pell as a lady and not pawing her, and by handling the socalled law enforcers like scum and grabbing one of them by his testicles. But are we to believe that this is enough to get the woman to betray her husband and upbringing, and to stop the sheriff's boys (or the KKK) from gunning Anderson down, especially since he keeps laying himself open to such an exercise in marksmanship? And how are we to care about Ward at all, given that we never find out more about him than that he used to be in the Justice Department and was shot in the shoulder when "with Meredith at Ole Miss"? And how can our fine Anderson say good-bye to the severely husband-battered Mrs. Pell in her ravaged home (retaliation for her squealing) and not even offer to help clean up?

But as a thriller, the film has el ementally effective moments, thanks to Chris Gerolmo's explosive script and Alan Parker's detonating direction. Parker knows the shortest way to the viewer's gut, having been a leading British TVcommercial director. He jabs again and again from the very outset: adjoining drinking fountains, one labeled "White," one "Colored"; a white man drinks from the first, followed by a little black child drinking from the second. Next, a backwoods church is seen burning in such detail as Nero would have enjoyed accompanying, though here we get Mahalia Jackson singing a spiritual on the soundtrack. Then, in silhouette, lowly-looking graves. Now we are ready for the murder of the CORE workers.

Since no one living knows or will tell how it happened, the event had to be imagined. And what could be more alarming than to see in extreme longshot a car being pursued along a nocturnal country road by another vehicle whose headlights are turned off? The whole scene is imbued with precise nightmarishness, but the detail of the lightless pursuers gaining on the lighted victims is etched in unshakable horror. All of the early scenes work at least on the gut level, but the film starts losing points as it stops making sense, as when Ward, in a crowded noontime coffee shop, sits down at the back with a young black man and starts pumping him. The man silently moves away, but is nevertheless beaten to a pulp a bit later. Ward simply couldn't be that stupid and careless.

Still, Parker delivers some thorough Grand Guignol even when he ascribes preposterous methods to the FBI. What he should never do is sermonize. So when the town's mayor, who is not a Klansman, commits suicide, Ward enlightens a puzzled assistant: "He was guilty, just as guilty as the lunatics who pulled the triggers. Maybe we all are." Bathetic as this little preachment is, it was originally more extensively and grandiosely homiletic; Parker prints it all in the press kit, along with his intense regret at having had to cut it.