WATCH NOW
Movies usually happen in cities, however, these cities do not feel lived in. Alan Parker’s “Mississippi Burning” gives the impression of being made from the inside out, as though the movie knows about the people and the ways of the small southern city so well that after watching it, I know which coffee shop I would want to drink at and what places I would want to avoid Parker does. This film is aided by its focus on a very specific time and space in rural Mississippi, in 1964. This film makes it clearer than any other film I have watched how profound the nuances of passion are in regard to race relations in America.
The movie centers on the unsolved case of the missing Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, three young Civil Rights activists who were murdered in Mississippi during a voter registration initiative. Their bodies served as irrefutable evidence against the officials who claimed the entire debacle was a publicity stunt engineered by Northern liberals and outside agitators. It later became one of the markers, like the day Parks sat on the bus or King marched to Montgomery, on the long journey toward racial justice in this country.
“Mississippi Burning” is not a mockumentary, nor does it try hard to put together a story from the sides of history. It is a gritty police drama, full of blood, deep passion, and in some parts very dark humor. The movie details the attempts of two FBI men trying to manage an investigation into the disappearances. Anderson, played by Gene Hackman, is a sheriff used to a “good old boy” life, in a small town just like this one. Ward, played by Willem Dafoe, is one of Kennedy’s shining rising stars in the Justice Department. He is one of the bright boys. Anderson insists on keeping a low profile in and around the barber shop, snooping for the likely suspects. Ward believes that force is the way to go and in search of the missing workers he calls hundreds of federal agents and even the National Guard.
Anderson and Ward do not have a high regard for one another. After all, both men feel that they should be at the helm of the entire affair. While at odds with one another, we are introduced to some townspeople. The Mayor, an oil magnate’s secretary with a country club-type lifestyle, is very vociferous against people stirring up trouble who he calls ‘Outsiders’ and loves to rant about.
The sheriff considers himself strong enough to scare off the FBI agents, while Pell (Brad Dourif) is a fidgety-eyed deputy who has an alibi for the time the three men went missing. It is a good alibi, but why does he possess such an alibi for that period of time unless he desperately needs one? It’s too plausible to be true. Pell’s (Frances McDormand) wife provides the alternative alibi. Pell’s wife has been taking abuse for a long from her self-hating, racist husband who feels the need to wear a hood over his head and a gun on his belt during the day.
“Anderson,” the Hackman character, simply scans Pell’s wife when examining the family, and considers her as the most crucial person in the entire investigation. Anderson suspects that the sheriff’s office gave the three men to the local klan and that his wife knows way too much. If the wife chooses to spill the beans, it’s game over for him.
So he starts to linger. Engages in casual conversation. Fidgets in her living room like an awkward adolescent. Lets his voice die away in the hope that she will fantasize about what he would say, which is that she is still a very beautiful woman. Anderson knows exactly how to play this woman.
And she wants to be played. Because Hackman is so understated, it takes us time to understand that he is in fact besotted with her. He would want to take her away from the filth she is married to and put her safely into his arms.
This kind of relationship is in contrast to the main thread of the film, which features a lot of ordinary police work, including interrogations, searches, and mostly waiting for tips. There is good reason to believe that a number of people, perhaps in the local black community, have some reasonable information regarding the identity of the murderers. But the clan destroys and burns down the home of one family with a potentially helpful son, and there is fright in the black community.
Parker, the director, decides to not use melodrama to portray how shocked the local blacks are of revenge he opts for realism instead. We witness what can happen to people who are not “good nigras.” The Dafoe character tries to interrogate a black man sitting alone in a segregated luncheonette. The black refuses to engage with him and still gets a beating from the clan. Sometimes, silence can be the wisest thing to say. Parker has encountered intimidating bullies in his profession, especially in ‘Midnight Express’ but what stands out in this particular movie is the understated evil in it.
The entire cast lacks great villains and sadistic torturers and instead contains scandals of everyday life alongside stereotypical little racists infused with a cruel edge.
At the conclusion of the movie, the corpses have been discovered along with the murderers, meaning justice is on its way to be served. As is often the case, we were aware of the outcome the moment we stepped into the cinema. However, it is useful to bear in mind that we might not know or remember the events of 1964. The civil movements of the early 1960s mark the finest hour in modern American history. In reality, it is one of the darkest periods of history, when we made a significant effort to change ourselves and our reality. The growth was exhibited not only from the South but the entire country. It was a radical but comforting idea that every single American was created equal, as well as had certain unalienable rights life, liberty, and of course the pursuit of happiness.
The film “Mississippi Burning” leaps the furthest over any other media I have consumed in terms of reminding people that for a substantial part of history, black people, especially in the southern parts of America, had their basic rights stripped away by law: they were never given a chance. There was a time, not too long ago, when entire regions of America functioned as a police state, with the offense being possessing the color black. America is still far from being a utopia for blacks, but at least the law no longer permits racist ideologies to run rampant. I have not seen another film that presented at such a visceral level the way this form of oppression is presented and the violence done to the people’s spirits. In this film, we can feel the racist’s contempt for blacks and how it substitutes for other hobbies, how it fills in for their nothingness, and how satisfying and pleasurable their contempt feels to them. We can sense the initial moments of the sensation of fresh air rushing when the supporting structures of racism are shattered and dispersed.
The Academy Award nominees for Best Picture in 1988 will no doubt remember the film when considering the most American film award Mississippi Burning had to be given.
This is the best American crime movie of the decade and it’s statement is equally as strong. It mixes stunning violence with a beautiful score that is captivating on its own. It has been said that the academy enjoys giving awards to films that are based on events of the past, riddled with crime, and set in a distant era. To those people, here is a nominee with the ink still drying on its pages.
I expect Hackman and Dafoe to be nominated for an Oscar and rightfully so, but I beg that McDormand gets the attention she deserves too. Her performance, although subdued, is nothing short of brilliant. There are strikingly sensitive moments in the film where McDormand shows a woman raised to try to discipline her husband who gradually comes to terms with the reality that treating her husband the way she has shown to does not equate to affection. The woman McDormand portrays is muted and timid, but she courageously objects to her husband’s way of treating whole races of people slowly. Shocking as it is, she represents a generation that has woken up to the simple reality that what is happening around us with such indifference is wrong.
To watch more movies like Mississippi Burning (1988) visit 123movies
Also Watch for more movies like:
