Themes: Culture Clash, Unlikely Criminals, Members of the Press
Main Cast: Kevin Spacey, John Cusack, Jack Thompson, Lady Chablis, Alison Eastwood
Release Year: 1997
Country: US
Run Time: 155 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Clint Eastwood directed this adaptation of John Berendt's non-fiction best-seller about a Savannah, Georgia, murder case. When this film was released, Berendt's book had been on best-seller lists for four years. As the film begins, New York journalist John Kelso (John Cusack), alter ego of author Berendt, arrives in Savannah to do a brief Town and Country article on the annual Christmas party given by sophisticated, urbane antique dealer Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), who restored many mansions in Savannah, including the famed Mercer House where he lives. After the party, Williams kills his rude, violent lover Billy Hanson (Jude Law), explaining it as a necessary act of self-defense. Kelso decides to stay in Savannah to cover the trial, encountering a variety of colorful locals, eccentric and otherwise, including black transvestite nightclub performer Lady Chablis (appearing as herself), financially challenged bon vivant Joe Odom (Paul Hipp), vocalist Mandy Nichols (Alison Eastwood), voodoo priestess Minerva (Irma P. Hall), and Williams's deceptively powerful defense attorney Sonny Seiler (Australian actor Jack Thompson with a very convincing Southern accent). Kelso develops a romantic interest in Mandy while tracking the events that led up to the killing. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
Review
Clint Eastwood re-affirmed his directorial talents with this adept, atmospheric portrait of Savannah, GA based on John Berendt's wildly popular non-fiction bestseller. Eastwood wonderfully captures the pervasive feel of the Southern city's idiosyncratic subculture: The Savannah of Midnight is a world in which the everyday and the bizarre are one and the same. The film itself has a similar Southern drawl, unhurried and rich with suggestion. Kevin Spacey plays the potentially-murderous Jim Williams such that the character becomes a metaphor for the internally-conflicted South. John Cusack is reliably likeable, though the film's dependence on his character to move the plot along is one of its chief weaknesses. A couple of factors may have harmed Midnight's success at the box office: its laid-back, 155-minute running time is a bit long for most attention spans; and Eastwood took on the near-impossible task of visualizing a story that had already been realized in the heads of millions of readers. Still, the film remains a wonderful snapshot of an original, completely American slice of life. ~ Matthew Doberman, All Movie Guide
Irma P. Hall - Minerva; Paul Hipp - Joe Odom; Jude Law - Billy Hanson; Dorothy Loudon - Serena Dawes; Anne Haney - Margaret Williams; Kim Hunter - Betty Harty; Geoffrey Lewis - Luther Driggers; Rhoda Griffis - Card Club Woman #2; Shannon Eubanks - Mrs. Hamilton
Credit
James Murakami - Art Director, Jack Gammon Taylor, Jr. - Art Director, Michael Maurer - Associate Producer, Phyllis Huffman - Casting, Tom Rooker - Co-producer, Robert Lorenz - First Assistant Director, Clint Eastwood - Director, Joel Cox - Editor, Anita Zuckerman - Executive Producer, Lennie Niehaus - Composer (Music Score), Henry Bumstead - Production Designer, Jack N. Green - Cinematographer, Clint Eastwood - Producer, Arnold Stiefel - Producer, Richard C. Goddard - Set Designer, John H. Anderson - Set Designer, Willie D. Burton - Sound/Sound Designer, John Lee Hancock - Screenwriter, William McConnell - First Assistant Camera, John Berendt - Book Author
This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (September 2007)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
The cover of the 1994 novel, which features the Bird Girl sculpture.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a work by John Berendt. The book was Berendt's first, and became a The New York Times bestseller for 216 weeks following its debut.[1]
The book was subsequently made into a 1997 movie directed by Clint Eastwood based loosely on Berendt's story.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is atmospheric and Southern Gothic in tone, depicting a wide range of eccentric Savannah personalities.
The action that serves as a catalyst in the book is the killing of Danny Hansford, a local hustler (characterized as "a good time not yet had by all") by respected antique dealer Jim Williams. Four murder trials resulted, with the final one ending in acquittal after the judge finally agreed to having the case moved away from the Savannah jury pool. The book characterizes the killing as a murder. Hansford and Williams were linked sexually, but the exact nature of their relationship was unclear. The death took place in Williams's home, originally built by an ancestor of songwriter and Savannah native Johnny Mercer.
The book also highlights many other residents of Savannah, most notably The Lady Chablis, a local drag queen and entertainer. Chablis provides both a Greek chorus of sorts as well as a lighthearted contrast to the more serious action.
The book's plot is based on real-life events that occurred in the 1980s and is classified as nonfiction. Because it reads like a novel, it is sometimes referred to as a "nonfiction novel," a subgenre popularized by Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. (Booksellers generally feature the title in the "true crime" subsection.) It is among the most popular nonfiction releases of all time.
The title alludes to the hoodoo notion of "midnight"; the period between the time for good magic and the time for evil magic; in "the garden of good and evil," which refers principally to Bonaventure Cemetery.
The famous Bird Girl statue, originally designed both as art and as a birdseed holder, was originally located at Bonaventure. A Savannah photographer, Jack Leigh, was commissioned to take a photograph for the cover of the book and created his now famous photograph of the statue. The Bird Girl was relocated in 1997 for display in the Telfair Museum in Savannah.
Subjective elements
While the author contends that the essence of the book is true, and the events did occur, much of the book's text is highly subjective. Berendt himself makes this clear in the Author's Word, which appears at the end of the book.
Berendt actually came to Savannah a year after the crime occurred and met Jim Williams in prison after Williams's second conviction. This is substantially different from the opening half of the text, in which Berendt presents himself as a central character introduced into the story as it happens. The narrative has Berendt depicting himself as present during conversations that he could never have heard. Many of the incidents and people are indeed based in reality, but much of the book has been restructured or fictionalized for effect.
