Grey Gardens (HBO)
by Michael Sucsy
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DVD details
Actor: Daniel Baldwin, Drew Barrymore, Jessica Lange, Ken Howard, Malcolm GetsDirector: Michael Sucsy
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-07-14
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: HBO
Product features:
- GREY GARDENS (DVD MOVIE)
DVD Reviews of Grey Gardens (HBO)
DVD Review: Absolutely amazing and emotionally devastating
Summary: 5 Stars
This is just about a perfect film in every way. The acting was absolutely breathtaking- especially Jessica Lang- the photography, sets and costumes were wonderful, the music score was completely perfect and a great accomplishment, and the script, I thought, was absolutely PERFECT. Just brilliant.DVD Review: grey gardens grows fabulously as hbo film!
Summary: 5 Stars
as a documentary, the maysles brothers' "grey gardens" gives a viewer an unrelenting portrait of two women that are as bound by duty as they bound by love in their life together. this portrait is lightened by the beale's inexhaustible lust for life as they wind out in their decaying summer house, grey gardens.
the documentary gave inspiration to a musical starring christine ebersole and mary louise wilson as 'little edie' and 'big edie' beale. then, director michael sucsy decided to take up the story of the beales and show us how these two remarkable women ended up in utter and almost irreverisble squalor. his film succeeds on so many levels.
first of course, is the casting. drew barrymore is giving the performance of her career as 'little edie' beale. barrymore's life in the public eye, her eccentricities, her joie de vivre and somewhat off-center sense of style have a great home in this character. and she does not disappoint. she is matched by jessica lange as 'big edie' beale. lange has to draw on more in order to make the older beale come to life--she has to sing, she has to endow what would seem a silly and selfish woman with resilience and warmth--and she succeeds too. these women are helped out a great ensemble cast that includes jeanne tripplehorn as jacqueline bouvier kennedy, ken howard as phelan beale and arye gross as albert maysles, just to name a few.
sucsy surrounds his wonderful cast with great production values, a strong screenplay that doesn't trade on the most famous moments of the documentary but reconstructs them to the tee, beautiful camera work and editing and an elegant score by rachel portman.
i would gladly see both again and in the same sitting. i, too, am a STAUNCH character!
DVD Review: Feelings Ain't So Bad
Summary: 5 Stars
I watched the documentary version of GREY GARDENS a few months ago. My one & only said that I've "just got" to see it. I asked what it was about & she said it was a documentary about Jackie O's relatives who had fallen on hard times. It didn't sound very interesting to me at all & I said I'd pass; but Suzanne can be extremely persuasive, so I sat down for the inevitable hour and a half of boredom.
For the first 15 minutes or so everything in the film seemed to confirm my worst forebodings. An old lady & her middle-aged daughter, living in a mansion that could pass for the House of Usher on a real good day. Then the girly-girly bit of exploring the "feelings" between the old lady & the daughter. Then something began to change. I became interested in the 2 women as people, as individuals. They reminded me of characters in a Chekhov play, unable to movtivate themselves to save their own skin. At any rate, I was glad I watched the documentary first, because it enhanced the movie, just as the movie filled in some gaps in the documentary.
Jessica Lange is one of my all time favorite American actors. In the movie she plays a character much older then herself, and certainly less beautiful. There are a few flashback scenes in which she plays the "Big Edie" closer to her (Jessica's) own age. Drew Barrymore (who also co-produced) too is usually playing a character older than herself, but closer her age in the flashbacks. The flashbacks really help to make sense of how the characters came to find themselves in the odd predicament...well, that they find themselves in.
For valid reasons or not, mother & daughter have exiled themselves to a life of isolation & poverty. And no genteel poverty here by any standard. The house is a filthy, decapitated heap of rotting wood, food & feces. A huge racoons lumbers in & out through equally gigantic holes in the wall that it's eaten through. The human occupants reaction? They feed it as though it was starving (it isn't.)
Some of the reasons for their deplorable housekeeping are explored in the film version, verbally touched upon in the documentary. "Big Edie" is imperious & crashed up after a failed marriage (that has a lot to do with her finacial impoverishment.) "Little Edie" desperately wanted to be a performer, a film star. As a consequence in her real life she is acting all over the place. It is clear that she is an aging "enfant terrible," a emotionally needed child prone to give utterance to uncomfortable truths that most people would rather not hear. Her need to perform comes out loud & clear in both versions--and you know what? She's pretty damn good.
So what's up with the strange relationship between mother & daughter? They seemed trapped in a self-destructive, self-perpetuating, often vituperative, song & dance. The man who wrote the documentary review below, at one point states that he found Big Edie to be malicious & demeaning to those around her, particularly to Little Edie. I didn't get that sense at all, either in the film or the documentary. Instead I see them as 2 highly eccentric individuals who are as emotionally supporting as destructive. At any rate, they are individuals, people with distinct & strong preferences, dislikes & ideas--and that's what makes them so darn interesting.
But there is something definitely "wrong" with them. They're not hoarders, a psychological obessive compulsive condition that causes suffers to jam their living environment with everything they can haul back every useless thing they can finds--but the Beales don't go out. They just don't clean up after themselves--at all. They're not suffering from dementia because they're quite capable of carrying on prolonged, highly inteligent conversations. They seem locked in an unending bi-polar depression--with fleeting manic episodes when they try to connect with their failed ambitions to be on the stage.
There's a great scene in the movie (not in the documentary) where Jackie O. actually shows up. You see, the local town council has threatened mother & daughter with eviction if they don't clean up their act--like the horrific condition of their house & grounds. Due to their Bouvier-Kennedy connection, the national media picks up the story & blasts it around the world. Jackie is one of a few relatives determined to help out (probably more out of shame than genuine concern.) Jackie is not favorably portrayed. She's a little snooty & reeks of class hypocrisy. As much as Aunt Edith sucks up to her, Cousin Edith puts her down (it's her belief that she could have married JFK instead of Jackie.) It's a very funny scene.
The make-up & prosthetics used in the film are outstanding. This being said, it is the chracterization of the leading ladies that are ultimately impressive & make this odd little film a tremendous success. Drew Barrymore in particular shines in a role that almost appears to have been "channelled." Jesse Lange gave the same type of eerie performance in her depiction of the ill-fated actress Frances Farmer. Both actresses mesh as an ensemble, making this movie a wonderful & moving cinematic event.
To top this off, one of the reasons that I was glad to have watched the movie after the documentary was the final scene. In the documentary you were pretty much left with the impression that Little Edie would never leave the house and would, in fact, die in it like mother before her. But this apparently that was not so. She eventually does leave the house & encouraged by a few supportive friends, in the last scene she is performing in a nightclub--and the audience really seems to like her.
I guess I've got girly-girly feelings too.
PS. I should have left it there, but persistent interest in these strange people prompted me to explore their background. WIKIPEDIA carries 2 great articles on each woman. As it turned out, Little Edie's cabaret act went nowhere--although it did garner her some fans who kept in correspondence with. She died alone.
Grey Gardens - Criterion Collection
Frances
DVD Review: Lange is Brilliant! Great Story; Excellent Acting! See This One!
Summary: 5 Stars
The story of the Kennedy relatives is interesting and a true story. Jessica Lange is one of the centuries best actors. She is beyond brilliant in this role. She could not have been better. She captured every nuance of the woman she played. Surprisingly, Drew Barrymore is good too. If you like good acting and an interesting story -- see this one. DVD Review: terrific, excellent character study
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a fascinating look into the lives of real-life characters! These two actresses did outstanding work, both were deserving of awards(Jessica was rewarded with an emmy). I enjoyed the background of their growing up which gave us the "reasons" for their odd behavior. Movie worth every penny!
Description of Grey Gardens (HBO)
Based on the life stories of the eccentric aunt and first cousin of Jackie Kennedy, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, Grey Gardens tells the tender, intimate story of an eccentric mother and daughter (both named Edith Bouvier Beale aka "Big and Little Edie"). They were raised as Park Avenue d?butantes but withdrew from New York society, taking shelter at their Long Island summer home, "Grey Gardens ." As their wealth and contact with the outside world dwindled, so did their grasp on reality. They were reintroduced to the world when international tabloids learned of a health department raid on their home, and Jackie swooped in to save her relatives. Based on the lives that inspired the Maysles Brothers' classic documentary.It's hard to imagine a feature film that could improve upon the classic 1975 Hamptons-gothic documentary Grey Gardens, co-directed by Albert and David Maysles. Yet this Grey Gardens, directed by Michael Sucsy for HBO Films, captures not only the pathos and peculiarity of Edith Beale, m?re et fille--aristocrats who were aunt and cousin to former first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy--but it provides something deeper and richer: the background story of the glamorous Beale ladies, and a glimpse at how they slid from gay 1930s high society to sharing rotting living quarters with litters of cats and raccoons.
Drew Barrymore, the Grey Gardens standout, rises to the particular challenge of playing "Little Edie" Beale, whose accent, carriage, and mannerisms have developed their own camp following over the years. Barrymore's performance is a revelation: she captures the weirdness of Edie, but she knows what the documentary fans know--the reality of what Edie once had been, and what she was becoming. Barrymore's performance is delicate and strong, with a hint of sadness underneath the fading ing?nue's brave face. Jessica Lange plays "Big Edie," the mother who made more concrete choices to wall herself off from the outside world. Lange is excellent, though Big Edie is a less nuanced character than her daughter, and she seems more content with her lot, perched in her teeming twin bed surrounded by mounds of cats and trash.
The filmmakers pay deep homage to the documentary, and carefully recreate the third lead character of the drama--the East Hampton, N.Y., mansion Grey Gardens itself. The making-of featurette is a must-have for fans of either film, as the filmmakers and actors talk about how they built a three-story facsimile of the home near Toronto (which also stands in for the Manhattan scenes). Also fascinating is the story of how certain beloved sets from the documentary were painstakingly re-created, including the Beales' yellow bedroom, the entryway that played stage to the dancing aspirations of Little Edie, and the crumbling porch and yard where Edie would pose and prance, decked out in tights, shorts, a pinned-up skirt, and her signature sweater-snood, fastened with a brooch just so. "Well, Mother and I are very entertaining, that's true," says Little Edie, when the Maysles first approach her about cooperating in their documentary. And, happily, viewers of HBO's Grey Gardens could not agree more. --A.T. Hurley
Stills from Grey Gardens (click for larger image)
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