Grey Gardens (1976)

  The Cinema Club pick of the week was Grey Gardens.  I had already reviewed the 2009 movie, and thought it would prepare me for the documentary.  I was wrong.

In the early 70s, Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Little Edie, made the papers when their East Hamptons mansion, Grey Gardens, was revealed to be a crumbling wreck filled with garbage, stray cats, and wildlife.  The press shamed their famous relative, Jackie Kennedy, into organizing a clean-up, getting the house into at least a livable state and paying for a caretaker.  Documentarians Albert and David Maysles followed the news clippings and planned a video follow-up, discovering that there was more under the surface of neglect amongst the upper class.

A movie is one thing.  You expect a little artistic license, some embellishment for the sake of drama.  A documentary is uncompromising, actual, observable truth.  And it's so much worse than the movie.  Big Edie and Little Edie each have their version of events, which they pronounce at full volume over each other, neither having much relation with reality.  The casual cruelty is astonishing, but the willful dismissal of their surroundings is horrifying.  The house is filled with trash, feral cats, and local wildlife, and remember this is AFTER the major clean-up, which can be seen mostly by its absences.  Gone are the antiques, the furniture, the glassware, the carpets, the wall hangings, presumably sold to pay debts or "rescued" from their imminent destruction.   But the Edies don't seem to notice or care, gamely continuing to play hostess to the documentary crew and whatever local handymen come around.

This is a camp classic.  Little Edie's DIY fashion and need for dramatic expression speak to a lot of people.  There's something unutterably sad and yet somehow admirable in the Beales' ability to soldier on, despite their (self-inflicted) circumstances.  They are clearly co-dependent and most likely mentally ill, which makes the movie feel a little exploitative, but the Maysels aren't filming for shock value (well, at least not for that shock) or to be cruel.  If anything, they are neutral leaning towards sympathetic.

Also, and this just occurred to me, if I was a grieving widow of an assassinated president and my asshole relatives got me dragged in the press and publicly shamed, I would never fucking speak to them again, much less pay for their upkeep.  Holy shit.

Grey Gardens is streaming on Criterion Channel and (sigh) Max.