Mississippi Burning (1988)
Last Watch Date - March 17, 2024
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
Well shoot, this is a tough movie to make any stupid comments about. I don't know how I never watched this before, but here we are. I was 5 when this came out, but I have been hearing of this movie forever as a teen and adult. Nothing in particular sparked this watch, but I have a few weird feelings after watching it. Oh, and it's based on real events. Not like TCM, but pretty close to the actual events of the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.
The fact is that the nonsense these white supremacists are spouting in this movie, even the townspeople who pretend nothing is wrong, is the same stuff I hear from the MAGA people today. In most cases, they've dropped the "Anglo-Saxon" part, but they stick right with the other stuff. Nothing is ever really happening, it's all a conspiracy! Those good ol' boys would never do something like that, and if they did, those victims were asking for it and deserved it. It's disheartening that this rhetoric has gone from weird niche Southern Confederate sympathizers to widespread in the US in 2024. What's worse is that I personally know folks who would gladly side with these people.
The actors in this movie are excellent across the board. Gene Hackman, Willem DaFoe, Frances McDormand, Brad Dourif, R Lee Ermey, Michael Rooker. You hate the villains and sympathize with the FBI agents trying to nail them. The portrayal of 60s Mississippi feels right, although I never lived there and wasn't alive in the 60s. Wardrobe and sets were great.
This movie is a bit long for me, sitting just over 2 hours. But it was well-paced for the most part. There are pieces of slow panning with black church singing played over it that I can do without. I get the theme, but I also don't think the scenes they showed were typically worth lingering on. As a side note, it's always bizarre to me how ingrained Christianity is in the black communities, particularly those ones who were oppressed by the white Christian people around them and who used religion as a justification for why they did what they did.
Recommended?
Yeah. Even 36 years later, it's still relevant. It's a gritty watch and not really enjoyable in the sense of something like Dolls, but it's still good.
