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BY KIM MORGAN Grey Gardens |
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There is nothing gray about Grey Gardens, the estate; it is an overgrown, lush jungle, where the sea gently laps the nearby shore. Nor is their anything gray about Grey Gardens, the movie, whose subjects, Edith and Edie Beale, are anything but pallid. The daughters of American aristocracy, aunt and cousin to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, these women are exotic birds of a paradise lost, two real-life Daisy Buchanans gone Baby Jane Hudson in one of the most fascinating documentaries ever made. Originally released in 1975, Grey Gardens (showing at Cinema 21 in a revival) is an extraordinary, still-relevant and influential work of cinéma vérité by documentary auteurs Albert and David Maysles. The brothers worked together in the documentary genre--or "direct cinema," as they preferred to call it--from 1957 until David's death in 1987; their previous films include Salesman (1969), the heartbreaking precursor to Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, and Gimme Shelter (1970), the Rolling Stone's dark antidote to Woodstock. Though controversial for their earlier work (a man is stabbed to death by a Hells Angel in Gimme Shelter), they received their most damning criticism for Grey Gardens. Accused of both voyeurism and tabloid-style exploitation of aging women, the brothers pushed the limits of vérité to a bizarre yet recognizably human level. By revealing the intimate power struggle between an artistic mother and her flamboyant daughter, the filmmakers created an unflinching portrait whose disturbing power was heightened by viewers' flinching recognition: Almost everyone has a family, and almost no one's is functional. The movie loosely tells the tale of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter "Little Edie," a pair of misfits who lived for decades at Grey Gardens in East Hampton, Long Island. Beginning with newspaper headlines screaming about the estate's unsanitary condition and its condemnation by the Suffolk County Health Department (The New York Post stated that the two were "living in a garbage-ridden, filthy 28-room house with 8 cats, fleas, cobwebs and no running water"), the movie indulges the viewer with the offbeat and spellbinding lives of mother and daughter Beale. At the helm is Little Edie, who, in her independent, alluring and creative (some may say repulsive) way, leads the filmmakers through the disordered, spoiled and tangled corridors of their house and minds. Dressed in an assortment of ensembles ranging from a bathing suit worn with fishnet stockings and white high heels to towels, curtains and tablecloths, Edie is never without a turban and a dramatic gesture, look or utterance. Once a ravishing beauty--truly she was, like a blue-blood Marilyn Monroe--with a sharp wit, Edie mysteriously left a promising career as a dancer, model and actress to live with her aging mother. Despite her insistence that she is "losing her figure," she is still attractive, regardless of the camera's unflattering angles. The same holds true for Big Edie, who in her youth bore an uncanny resemblance to Uma Thurman. The sister of "Black Jack" Bouvier (Jackie's father) and former wife of Wall Street lawyer Phelan Beale, Big Edie was the black sheep. Once at Grey Gardens, she was free to pursue the pastimes that brought her great joy and a bohemian reputation: singing, playing the piano and hanging out with her artistic, mostly male friends. Less eager to be filmed than her dramatic daughter, she is all at once a shrew, a formidable intellect and an artist who appears enraptured when she sings in a trembly 79-year-old voice. Both women's distinct personalities fill the picture sublimely. Though the Maysles refrain from using standard techniques of documentary narration, the mother-and-daughter interaction itself illustrates the Beales' simultaneously tumultuous and stagnant life. The two women live in aristocratic squalor, eating liver pâté, ice cream and crackers; singing, dancing and bickering in their bedroom; and feeding Wonder Bread and Cat Chow to the raccoons living in their attic. Their strangely witty dialogue would do Tennessee Williams proud. Big Edie, having lived alone for 30 years, considers herself an independent spirit: "I had my cake, loved it, masticated it, chewed it and had everything I wanted." When Little Edie accuses her mother of being anti-Catholic, Big Edie exclaims: "What the hell, I worship the Catholic church!" And when a cat is spied crouching next to a beautiful old painting of Big Edie, she says nonplused: "Oh look, the cat's going to the bathroom on my portrait...I'm glad someone's doing something he wanted to do."As hilarious as much of the women's rapport is, it is also tinged by a bitter, sometimes wistful pain. "I missed out on everything," sighs Little Edie. "I was stuck here." Laughing, her mother says, "You're never gonna get out of here." Though their relationship is certainly entertaining, it also a potent example of love-hate relationships typically built on simultaneous fear and ferociousness. The Maysles brothers capture this weird bond expertly, and the viewer, however uncomfortable, cannot turn away. It is too much a magnification of our own strained bonds; like many great dramas, it's an allegory. Is the film cruel or simply truthful? Both the Maysles brothers and the Beales thought the latter, and both staunchly defended the film. Those who leave this film thinking of the Beales as mere freaks are missing Grey Gardens' major questions: What is healthy? What is wealth and breeding? What is normal? At the end of Grey Gardens one may echo Little Edie misquoting Robert Frost: "Two roads converged in yellow wood. Pondering one, I took the other... Isn't that beautiful?"
originally published August 12, 1998 |
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