Crazy in Alabama reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

The Mammoth in the Magnolia Tree

Crazy in Alabama is a mess, but a mess that is a lot of fun and that stimulates more than its share of noble thoughts, sometimes, perhaps, a bit too noble for its own good. No matter how light, even dizzy the comedy aims to be, we can’t forget this is a film about racism, domestic violence, and two brutal deaths—one shown onscreen. That does put a damper on the fun.

This directoral debut of actor Antonio Banderas (Melanie Griffith’s husband) focuses on the events surrounding husband-decapitator Lucille (Griffith) and her favorite nephew PeeJoe (Lucas Black, retaining the accent he used in Sling Blade) in a small southern town in 1965. Aunt Lucille shows up with her seven children and her husband’s head, dumps the children with her mother, and heads across country with the head of the head of the family, which continues to communicate with her. Is this one sick lady, Crazy in Alabama as well as in Hollywood, where she ends up on the television series Bewitched, or what?

As she flirts and robs her way across country (Thelma without Louise), racial unrest comes to her hometown, not so much racial unrest, however, as a bunch of kids who want to swim on a hot day. Sheriff Doggett (singer Meat Loaf) over-reacts. There is a death, which might be an accident, but there have been too many such accidents.

Lucille’s nephew PeeJoe is the unlikely point of overlap of the two stories. She confides in him perhaps more than she should before she leaves. Later, he witnesses the death during the attempt to integrate the swimming pool. While his aunt seeks fame in Hollywood, he has fame thrust upon him when his picture appears on the cover of Look magazine.

Since this film comes very close to my heart (since I went through a small town’s awakening during the civil rights struggles of the mid-sixties), I want to like it more than I do. But Banderas has tried to do too much. He may have consciously decided to get Lucille out of Alabama—and his wife into her own mini-movie that is just too disjointed from the other story. The stories in the film veer wildly across the emotional landscape, from Lucille seducing a bellhop in Las Vegas to a father grieving the death of his son. Noble acts and high jinks crash into each other, with Lucille’s efforts to appear on Bewitched somehow given equal billing with the efforts to end segregation. By the time Rod Steiger appears as a judge in an over-the-top courtroom finale, even Lucille’s absurd headgear does not seem quite crazy enough. Oh, yes, we are told but not shown that the sheriff is going to be punished. But, as with much in this film, we are told more than we are shown.

When I first heard of this film, I wondered why the crazy lady is as enduring a stereotype of southern life as the racist sheriff? In the awkward juxtaposition of the two stories under the title Crazy in Alabama, this film offers an explanation, and that is what gives it value for me.

Some years ago, a friend shared with me a striking image for the denial fundamental to all dysfunctional families, the denial that was fundamental to the small town society I grew up in. The image is of an elephant in the living room. For a family, the elephant can be many things—Dad’s violence, an uncle’s sexual advances, a sister’s drug abuse. No matter what, the family gathers around the elephant in the living room, pretending that it is not there. The uncle, who molested his nephew Saturday night, is an usher at church Sunday morning. Mom knows how to apply makeup to hide her black eyes. Sis is just going through a phase. And no one talks to strangers… or to each other.

In this film, more than once, when PeeJoe comments on some inequities in his society, he is told, "It’s not fair. It’s just the way it is." And it is an elephant, a big old hairy elephant with curving tusks, perched in the magnolia tree that looms over a whole dysfunctional society. All the fine citizens stroll languidly around the tree, admiring the magnolias, commenting on the heady perfume, even as they step in elephant dung. And the elephant, always seen, never acknowledged, just grows bigger and bigger, from generation to generation.

The elephant in the living room or the mammoth in the magnolia tree is crazy-making. Finally, and it may take generations, the elephant crashes through the living room floor, dragging everyone down with it. We were lucky that the trunk did not break, that the mammoth did not come crashing down on us all in a shower of magnolia petals thirty years ago.

For me, the most memorable scene in Crazy in Alabama occurs in the jail, where Lucille and Nehemiah, father of the murdered boy, talk about how they have ended up there. They connect, with Nehemiah passing a candy bar from his cell to hers. When he ends the scene by asking for a blessing on his enemies, the title takes on a new significance and depth. The craziness is not just that of a woman who murdered her abusive husband but also the craziness of a whole society. Later, when the disputed swimming pool is filled in, a black character remarks to a white character, "Now, we are just alike." What is fair? That half the citizens of the town have a place to swim, or that none of them do? Why wasn’t the third option, that everyone have a place to swim, never considered? Do I hear a limb in the magnolia tree creaking?

Although Banderas and company stumble through this jumble of stories, some insights come through. If, like me, you lived through the sixties, and especially, if you lived through that crazy time in a small southern town, by all means see this film. If you need a break from herding the elephants out of your own living room, this film can provide some diversions, although like The Story of Us, it is a more serious venture than its publicity suggests. Keep your feet dry and away from the elephant dung, your heart full of noble thoughts, and your eyes open for that clear blue water in the swimming pool that fear and misunderstanding paved over so many years ago.