MISSISSIPPI BURNING

OK, the big problem with this 1988 drama set in 1964 Mississippi, based on real events, is that it is telling a story about racism from an all-white perspective and with none of the black characters having any agency.

If you can get past that (I could) then there's a lot to enjoy.  And to be fair to the makers of the film, although it can be criticised as a white-saviour narrative, the saviours here (two FBI investigators, Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe) are not romanticised, and there is no triumphalism at the end.  Justice gets done but there's been too much hate and ugliness before then to leave the viewer with a feel-good feeling.  

Although US black-white relations are in many ways much better now, we know that there's still a lot more to be done. There's a KKK meeting here, where we see white folks happily absorbing racist bile, that brought to mind the MAGA movement.

To make the story more commercial the informant who helps the FBI, after three civil rights workers have disappeared, presumed dead, is the wife of one of the murderers, a local deputy.  She is played wonderfully well by Frances McDormand, earning her an Oscar nomination and putting boosters under her career. 

Matching her in the acting department is Gene Hackman, and their relationship is nicely handled.  Fortunately Hackman persuaded the director Alan Parker to drop a scene where they have sex - it is much better (and believable, no offence to Gene Hackman intended) that their relationship is discreet and understated.

I appreciated that the Willem Dafoe character is not likeable, and that he and Hackman's character never really hit it off, just about managing some grudging mutual respect by the end. This all seemed consistent with the serious and realistic tone of the film.  The events portrayed are horrific enough that we don't need things to be hyped up, or to be trivialised by the use of Hollywood clichés.

I think I should now try to watch, by way of comparison, 'In the Heat of the Night, made some twenty years earlier, and dealing with the same racial issues and also set in the South.  

RATING: ✓ If You've Nothing Better To Do