Salon | "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"

M O V I E S
Midnight in the
Garden of Good
and Evil
Directed by
Clint Eastwood
Starring John Cusack
and Kevin Spacey
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Cement Garden
YOU'D HAVE TO be a complete wet blanket not to have a good time reading John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Berendt, who had edited and written for magazines in New York for 20 years, moved to Savannah, Ga., charmed by the isolated eccentricity of the place. During Berendt's stay, one of the more prominent locals, a rich antiques dealer named Jim Williams, shot and killed his young employee and sometime lover in what he claimed was self-defense. The book Berendt wrote is a true-crime story in only the loosest sense (and, thankfully, without the ghoulishness that characterizes most true-crime books). Williams' several trials provide the pretext upon which Berendt hangs a portrait of the eccentrics who populate Savannah. Enjoyable as it is, and wildly successful as it has been (three years on the New York Times bestseller list and still going strong), "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is hardly your typical blockbuster book. Loose and idiosyncratic, possessed of a lazy decadence, the book is like a cotillion for oddballs thrown by a decent fellow. Berendt neither ridicules his subjects nor pretends a false kinship with them.
Apart from its being a thoroughly entertaining read, I've no great theory as to why "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" has become such a hit, and Clint Eastwood, who directed the new film version of Berendt's book, can't be faulted for not having one either. Which is about the only thing he can't be faulted for, since he seems to possess not the slightest idea about what makes the book fun in the first place. Eastwood's "Garden" is one scrubby, sorry-ass patch of land, denuded of beauty and largely untended. I can't say that "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is the most incompetent major studio film of the past few years (that would be "The Fugitive"), but you can't blame it for not trying. I'm dying to hear how all the critics who talk about Eastwood the craftsman are going to explain away things like the flashback sequence where what we're shown doesn't even match the accompanying narration. Or the identity of the tight-lipped, prune-faced old lady that Eastwood keeps showing in close-up during the trial. I finally surmised that she's the mother of the deceased, though she's never introduced, identified, referred to or even addressed by any other character.
Those gaffes would be easy to overlook if you didn't have two-and-a-half hours in which to notice them, and if the film weren't such a dragging, rhythmless piece of work. At one point the district attorney quotes Hobbes' remark that life is nasty, brutish and short. "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is pasty, mulish and long. The screenwriter, John Lee Hancock (who wrote the script for Eastwood's "A Perfect World"), has chosen to focus on Williams (Kevin Spacey) and his trial for the murder of his lover (here called Billy Hanson and played by British actor Jude Law, attempting a hot-headed Southern badass role as if he were auditioning to play Carol Coutrere, the near-psychotic nympho in Tennessee Williams' "Orpheus Descending"). The Berendt figure, named John Kelso and played by John Cusack, comes to Savannah to cover Williams' swanky Christmas party for Town & Country, stays on after the murder, scenting a book in the episode, and agrees to share any information he comes across with Williams and his lawyer (Australian actor Jack Thompson, serving up a performance that's pure Southern-fried corn and very entertaining, considering the aridity of the rest of the movie). He has also been given a love interest (played by Eastwood's daughter, Alison).
It hardly matters that Eastwood isn't in front of the camera (though I'll take the mercies I'm handed). His wizened, bone-dry style of, uh, acting has seeped right into his direction. There's no space here for the rococo antebellum perversity that wafted through Berendt's book. Savannah might as well be Mayberry for the way the curlicues of the locals have been slotted into cutesy character bits. Elsewhere, Eastwood's idea of humor is to wring laughs from the spectacle of a young man pressured to reveal his homosexuality on the witness stand. This may bring joy to those faithful souls manning the Eastwood auteur watch -- who'll no doubt remember equally charming touches in his other films, such as the dog of the gay killer in "The Eiger Sanction" being named Faggot.
Jonathan Demme might have reveled in the chance to bring Berendt's collection of odd ducks to the screen, and John Waters might have dug right into the book's undertow of genteel, Magnolia-scented kink. Is there any director less suited to the good-natured Southern Gothic malevolence of Berendt's book than Eastwood? Not even Savannah comes through as a character here. Eastwood focuses on barely any of the city's restored architectural glories, and that may be a blessing given the characteristic dreariness of Jack N. Green's cinematography.
The person who does seem to understand the tone of Berendt's book is Spacey. He plays Williams as a Southern gentleman who's cagey enough to make the few visible signs of his dark side seem like part of his charm, and arrogant enough to think he can get away with it. There's a sly perversity to the performance, especially when he takes stock of Cusack in the tux he's picked out for him and comments, "I have an eye for framin' things." Their scenes might have taken off if Hancock had written some sparring dialogue for them. As it is, Cusack doesn't have much to do, though he's charming (as always) and understated in his disbelief at the people around him. His best moment may be when he listens to Williams lying on the witness stand wearing an expression of amused disgust that recalls the classic moment in "The Grifters" when he's called on to identify his mother's corpse.
Cusack is best in his scenes with the Lady Chablis, the black drag queen who became somewhat of a celebrity as a result of Berendt's book and who appears here playing herself. Chablis is badly directed and badly photographed. Her scenes feel improvisational, and Eastwood isn't loose enough a director to encompass that approach. Watching Chablis, you may feel she's showboating (especially when she crashes a formal for local blacks to which Cusack has been invited), but the movie desperately needs the goosing-up her scenes bring it. Whenever Chablis is on-screen, she's in charge, and she announces that in everything from the way she carries herself -- conscious of the effect of every movement -- to her line readings, which tell you, honey, this doll is setting the rhythm here. She walks away with the movie, and it's a damn good thing, because the temptation is so strong to walk away from it. There's some sort of justice in that humorless paragon of stolid, boring manhood, Clint Eastwood, being shown up by a black drag queen. As Blanche Dubois said, sometimes there's God so suddenly.
SALON | Nov. 21, 1997
Charles Taylor is a writer living in Boston and a regular contributor to Salon.