Junebug
Directed by Phil Morrison. Starring Amy Adams, Embeth Davidtz and Alessandro Nivola. (2005)
Viewers are missing the point of the movie if they think Junebug is about laughing about how funny people can be in the south. If you rent the movie and read the blurb description it will say something like, "George finally consents to have his new sophisticated wife meet his family," as if he should be ashamed of them, as if they're weird.
Well his family is kind of weird. He has a sister-in-law, Ashley, who falls in love with his new wife Madeleine. Ashley thinks Madeleine is so pretty and thin and so smart, and that she can help her husband, who is always in such a bad mood, write a paper so that he can make some progress on his GED. Isn't it funny that he doesn't even have a high school diploma, isn't it funny that they're all smoking cigarettes all of the time and one of their primary activities seems to be searching for more cigarettes? Aren't the parents funny stereotypes; the father quiet and removed spending lots of time working on his woodworking in his shop in the basement, and puttering around the house saying to himself, "now if I were a screwdriver, where would I be?"
It's easy for the audience to want to identify with Madeleine, George's new wife from the big city of Chicago, who was born in Japan, and lived in South Africa and New York. She is the owner of an art gallery that specializes in outsider art. One could think, what a great person, she supports the arts and not only art but the art of the common person outside of the big art world. She is looking to find these lesser known voices and let them be heard; provide a stage for them. That's nice.
But there is a moment in the film, a turning point, where Madeleine has a chance to show her true colors. She has a choice. She can go to the hospital to be with her sister-in-law Ashley and the rest of the family as she gives birth to a new family member or she can visit with the outsider artist that she is trying to convince to show in her art gallery. She chooses to go see the artist.
One could argue, is that so wrong? She just met her new family, does she need to be there? The reason she and her husband had decided to visit that part of the country after all, was to persue the artist. But there's more. While visiting the artist she manages to persuade him to show his work at her gallery, but part of her persuassion includes slying letting him know that the gallery owner in New York that he had been thinking of going with is Jewish, once she discovers the artist's dislike of Jewish people. Iinstead of standing up for her colleague, she promises to take care of the artist personally and uses the artist's bigotry to her advantage -- not so nice. This is such a contrast to the people in her brother's family and the others in this small town, people who we may have been feeling superior to over the last hour of viewing the film. The artist's sister who has been negotiating for him says unexpectedly to Madeline, "I'm so sorry for your family's loss." Even though she has been intensely negotiating for her brother, those concerns are dropped at the news of the child who failed to survive childbirth.
Madeleine, is visibly taken aback, she has been thinking about her success in capturing the artist's work. The child who died, her sister-in-law's pain, has taken a back seat. So who are the morally superior ones? Could it be the quirky southerners who haven't travelled the world but are there for their family members, even if they can't find words to express themselves, but who are pained and feel sadness and burst into tears?
The story is interesting because there are no black and whites or judgements delivered. We get to think for ourselves. George is a bit miffed at Madeleine for not choosing to be with his family during their crisis. But in the car on the road back to the big city, he says to her, "I'm so happy to be getting out of here." Apparently all is forgiven, the blanket is pulled back over Madeline's shortcomings; she is a beautiful, intelligent woman once again that the world can smile upon. While the family back home are stupid, and backward; Ashley for being so darned optimistic and embracing all the life that she can reach, Jonny for working in a factory packing plates and the mother and father for their craft work. They are not spending their time sitting in cafes wearing berets writing in journals and smoking -- so their feelings, their lives are less meaningful than ours.
But some of us remember the Madeline of the night before. And we know that Madeline professes not to smoke, she is above that lower class smoking stuff, yet throughout the movie she finds cigarettes in the house and smokes them, trying to keep her secret from her husband George. George does the same thing, sneaking cigarettes and saying, "don't tell Madeleine."
Yes, we all smoke cigarettes, we are all cigarette smokers. George's family is unafraid to be themselves and noisily search for more cigarettes, while George and Madeleine smoke behind closed doors and try to hide their smoking sins from each other.