The Living Funeral Party: Get Low

It was the Great Depression, a high-spirited time when small towns indulged the whims of their local eccentrics. In the case of Felix Bush, it also involved a fair amount of money changing hands. Even if it is so-called “hermit money,” the kind that comes in ratty balled-up wads of cash, there are plenty of folks willing to take it in Aaron Schneider’s Get Low (trailer here), which opens in New York this Friday.

The real life Felix “Bush” Breazeale became a 1930’s media sensation when he held a “living funeral party” just to hear what folks would say about him after he died. To assure a proper turnout, the unconventional recluse offered his land in a lottery drawing for those who bought a ticket. It worked to the tune of 12,000 ostensive mourners.

Physically, Robert Duvall is a good fit for the historical Breazeale, known simply as Felix Bush in Low. Though once respectable, for decades he has lived in the woods with only his mule for company. Wild stories circulate about him in town that he would like told to his face. He is also preparing to “get low,” as in six feet under. However, he has more unresolved issues hanging over him than you can swing a dead possum at. While his premature funeral might help Bush find some closure, it definitely represents a big pay day for funeral director Frank Quinn, a street smart Chicago transplant.

Screenwriters Chris Provenzano & C. Gaby Mitchell have great ears for colorful regional expressions. However, their story arc holds few real surprises as it chugs along towards Bush’s redemption. In fact, when he finally makes his big public confession, it is almost anticlimactic.

Still, Bush is the sort of hardscrabble southern character Duvall seems born to play, conveying his gruff dignity as well as his caustic tongue. It is also a pleasure to see him opposite Sissy Spacek (as Bush’s very former romantic interest Mattie Darrow) in a film that isn’t Four Christmases. Bill Murray’s understated comic relief as Quinn definitely helps leaven the film’s earnest sentimentality. However, the POV character (Buddy, Quinn’s young protégé played by Lucas Black) is so bland and boring, he becomes a major drag on the film.

Low is not without its country charms, but given the talent assembled, it could have been considerably more. Notable for the wickedly sharp performances of Duvall and Murray, it opens Friday (6/30) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza and Regal Union Square Cinemas.

Depression Western: The Wild Girl

Even during the Great Depression, white America was irredeemable. Such seems to be the message of the latest remake of Dances with Wolves. Based on the novel by Jim Fergus (best known for One Thousand White Women), the Hallmark Movie Channel original The Wild Girl (trailer here) offers respectable production values and plenty of guilt to those tuning in for its premiere this coming Saturday night.

It is 1932, and the upper classes are pulling together. The son of a wealthy Mexican rancher has been kidnapped by a renegade band of Apaches and the idiot sons of America’s richest families have volunteered for the rescue mission. Of course, the hunting and fishing in the Sierra Madres is hard to beat. Not interested in phony heroics, wastrel Tolley Phillips’s one virtue is his lack of pretense. However, he is convinced by Ned Giles, an aspiring photo-journalist working as a waiter in his father’s private club, to sign up for the fool’s errand and to take him along as his valet.

As soon as he arrives, Giles accepts a freelance offer, ditching the good-sported Phillips. No longer employer and employee, they find themselves pseudo-rivals for the attentions of Margaret Hawkins, an anthropologist in training attached to the mission. Naturally, the Americans and Mexicans are dead set on some killing, so when Giles stumbles across a wounded Apache girl, Hawkins suggests offering to trade her for the boy, in an attempt to avoid bloodshed. Together with Tolley, his new gentleman’s gentleman, a former Apache Army scout and his resentful son, they head off a step ahead of the vigilante posse.

Wild ups the ante on Dances by adding class based resentment to its white racial guilt. However, the Depression era details give some film some character, setting it apart from other revisionist westerns. In fact, it looks quite well produced by non-premium cable standards and moves along at a decent clip.

Though he probably would have been voted least likely to succeed after 90210, Brian Austin Green follows up his surprisingly cool turn on The Sarah Connor Chronicles with reasonably likable work as Giles. Kathleen Munroe is also quite an engaging rooting interest as the determined Hawkins. As usual, Graham Greene projects wounded nobility as the former scout, while the rest of the cast is largely handcuffed by their clichéd characters.

While it might constitute damning with faint praise, Wild is at least watchable. Though the constant politically correct recriminations get tiresome, it features some nice performances along the way. Wild airs on the Hallmark Movie Channel this Saturday (4/24).

Breadlines & Champagne: Gabriel Over the White House

During times of depression people have to make do without a lot of luxuries. Should that include the checks and balances of representational democracy? It would seem William Randolph Hearst advocated as much in Gabriel Over the White House, his explicitly propagandistic foray into film production, directed by Gregory La Cava (better known for light comedies), which screens next week at the Film Forum, as part of their Breadlines & Champagne series of Depression-era films.

As Gabriel opens, the nation is mired in the depression, but the old boy network still reigns supreme. An unnamed party which seems to bear a passing resemblance to the GOP has installed one of its most genial and obedient members in the Oval Office. For staff, he has his governmental secretary, Hartley Beekman, and his “personal” secretary, Ms. Pendola Molloy. He calls them Beek and Pendy, insisting they call him Major. Until one day, a severe accident radically alters Hammond’s personality. While recuperating, the President is visited off-screen by the angel Gabriel, who evidently gives him a good talking to. Suddenly, it is strictly “Mr. President.”

Fed up with the fecklessness of his former colleagues, the new Hammond declares martial law, suspending Congress and instituting an economic plan not radically dissimilar to the New Deal. Waging war on domestic racketeers, Hammond prosecutes gangsters in military tribunals, holding the pre-determined executions in sight of the statue of liberty. As a result of his harsh policies, Hammond’s popularity soars. Gabriel is prescriptive, not cautionary.

Gabriel cannot be considered very effective propaganda, because neither side of the ideological spectrum wants to claim it as their own. One recent commentator tried to draw parallels between Gabriel’s President Judson Hammond and our President George W. Bush. However, given the documented editorial input Hearst granted FDR and the incoming president’s expressed admiration for the film, the left is stuck with Gabriel, like it or not.

Frankly, Roosevelt’s embrace of such an explicitly authoritarian (arguably dictatorial) view of the presidency seems more than a little strange in retrospect. However, he most likely had little use for the film later in his administration. After all, Hammond becomes an ardent proponent of disarmament. Using a display of America’s assumed superior military might as a veiled threat, the possessed president convinces foreign heads of state, including Germany and Italy, to beat their swords in to plough-shares. Of course, mere days before the film’s 1933 theatrical release, Germany passed the infamous Enabling Act, setting the stage for Hitler’s ascension to Fuhrer. That naïve pacifism would quickly date the film.

Although never banished to the vaults, Gabriel has never been widely viewed since its initial release. At one time available on VHS, it has yet to see life on DVD. To its credit, Walter Huston is perfectly cast as Hammond, but his single-minded intensity hardly seems desirable in a chief executive. As Beek and Pendy, Franchot Tone and Karen Morley are likeable enough fielding all the predictable questions about their boss, but the film itself never engages the audience on any level deeper than the political. It is more of an intellectual curiosity than an emotionally involving movie experience.

Gabriel is a product of its time. Though flawed (and a bit disturbing), it is a perfect selection for the Film Forum’s Depression retrospective. It screens appropriately (I guess) next Monday on Presidents Day. Look for more 1930’s films, including more escapist fare, as Breadlines & Champagne continues through March 5th.

Photo: Photofest/Film Forum