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It’s nearly impossible to depict the Civil Rights Movement through the perspective of a white character in a film. The concept alone is frighteningly treating towards a southern black who’s actively lived the experience, to the point where the comparison to the film ‘Mississippi Burning’ seems accurate.
The most one could achieve through the ‘eyes on the prize’ narrative is a blanket dismissal of the story for purely “cultural appropriation” claims. Even if someone like Spike Lee is listed as a producer on the film.
That’s a barrier the folks who made “Son of the South” seem to have never overcome. This story, while well intended, comes across as an archetypical southern white paternalistic narrative – the story of an Alabamian who was a “white” pioneer organizer of the “Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee,” subsequently became a Freedom Rider and attended the famed “Freedom Summer.”
Bob Zellner was a real hero of the movement, the grandson of a prominent Alabama ‘Ku Klux Klan leader and son of a former Klansman who’d turned into a liberal Methodist minister focused on the idealism of racial equality.
Even as it recounts its tale and the greater saga it was part of, “Son of the South” goes for “cute,” leaving out some of the key figures who were part of this grassroots attempt to break the stranglehold that white supremacy had on America after the civil rights movement.
There is some good stuff here, and Zellner should be remembered, but the movie’s pluses are buried in too many cringe-inducing moments.
Zellner (Lucas Till, the new “MacGuyver”) first comes to notice in 1960 Montgomery. He manages to antagonize the local powers at Huntingdon College by inspiring students to go way beyond traditional classroom boundaries for the set assignment of ‘The Race Problem’ by organizing classes around Dr. Ralph Abernathy (Cedric the Entertainer, quite good) and culminating with Rosa Parks (Sharonne Lanier).
The first scenes with those two are one of the most enjoyable aspects of “Sons of the South.” Barry Alexander Brown, who has worked with Spike Lee for years, makes sure that “Abernathy” has a mixture of stoicism in his eyes which makes him appear as if he is seeing the long road ahead as well as depicting compassion in his eyes suggesting him ready to walk along the road and explore it. Additionally, Lanier’s “Parks” character is an agent, not the passive “She was just tired and didn’t want to give up her seat” reluctant heroine of myth stand. Just like John Lewis (Dexter Darden), she was looking for some “good trouble” when she initiated a protest that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and changed America.
This is why many people believe that Rosa Parks deserves her own biopic, which is where Lanier had her extraordinary turn.
Zellner is shown to be a mixture of curious and stubborn. While he does care about the cause, it appears might be the sort of classification he cares to put under “an interest,” which he got largely because of his “our-lives-are-all-planned-out-for-us” fiancée (Lucy Hale). He is very much a “screw everything” kind of guy who is furious about being threatened by the college and KKK.
Then there’s his Birmingham bigot Grand Dragon Grandpa (Brian Dennehy) and all the kid’s mind switches with every single cross burning you can imagine – never changing.
The saying from Zellner’s father, “taking no side is taking a side,” is something which grabs the attention of Zimmern. Along with his peers, Zimmern is obliged to listen to his grandfather’s long “call a spade a spade” speeches. It’s racist, but it is ‘get along to get along’ for Zimmern. He also has to witness the mobbing violence which erupts during the Freedom Riders’ attempts to integrate interstate bus service and what they have to endure when they finally reach Montgomery.
In portraying this incident, Brown does not shy away from exaggerating how horrific and gruesome the event was. This is where the ‘Son of the South’ story starts to spiral out of control and loses focus. Till’s Zellner caring for a stunningly beautiful, badly hurt Black college professor (Lex Scott Davis) makes for viral moments, but it is for all the wrong reasons.
This accomplished, Paris-educated, Fisk University professor who can speak five languages is further romanticized by the addition of being set upon by the incredible blondish Alabama undergrad. Silly.
Everything that follows, including Bob’s near murder by types who regard him as a “traitor to your race,” staggers under that (afterthought) romance and other cutesy touches. Bob, who worked the phones for SNCC in Atlanta, discovered this culture that he was eager to assist through “Jet” and “Ebony”. He has to unlearn “Nigra” and learn to pronounce “Negro”. And as he does, he receives more frank warnings from my own grandfather and directs threats at him, all moments that make you wince as they unfold.
Because surely Producer Spike Lee could have steered Brown away from this bombshell-laden film portraying a “white saviour” flying to the rescue of the destitute Black people in the Deep South.
The real Zellner, even if he is depicted as having the foresight to identify his “white privilege” long before that term came into common usage, must have seen how awkwardly this plays.
Yet all of that, the entire enterprise might have worked had they, not stripped the mentors who happened to be African American, and to whom the man was put on, of their authorship.
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