'Georgia' on My Mind

Still immersed in a long bout of writing and revision in my professional life, but as usual in these moments, through some bizarrely homeopathic logic, the most sustaining activity during my daily breaks turns out to be more writing—as long as it's about something I love. And since I've had no time to watch or re-watch for the Films of the 00s feature, I am turning to the next film up on my Favorites countdown, which seems to be one of the most popular features on this site anyway. Which means a trip back to Georgia, a film that generated a surprisingly robust love-it-or-hate-it conversation among critics and audiences in 1995, given the brevity of its release and its undeserved short-shirking by awards bodies, notwithstanding Mare Winningham's Oscar nomination (which should have netted the actual trophy) and Jennifer Jason Leigh's prize from the New York Film Critics Circle. Georgia got under a lot of people's skins, but that's part of what love is, as the movie is only too ready to show you. I wish the film and its actors had maintained even more momentum in the last few years, though Leigh, Winningham, Ted Levine, and Max Perlich keep fighting the good fight with dedication and purpose in character parts, and somehow that's a great legacy for Georgia to have. It's like an ideal, often-ignored album by a group of artists who have only united that one time, and have flirted off and on with the cultural radar even in their solo careers—but if you're receptive to it, you'll never stop spinning it. And of course, the musical metaphor isn't an accident:

"Georgia's key tool for dissecting and complicating the sisters and their relationships is its completely unerring gift for intensely focused realism, a completely unerring gift for intensely focused realism, a deep familiarity with character and environment that one rarely sees outside of a Mike Leigh movie, and with a deeper, richer palette and a sophisticated approach to rhythm and concision that Leigh's films, in their thespian virtuosity and their thinly laminated improvisations, sometimes miss. Ulu Grosbard, a solid actor's director who hasn't made another movie to touch this one, uses the songs ingeniously to carry the scenes and guide their textures, to include his pitch-perfect recognitions of the kinds of wanderlusters, make-doers, drop-outs, long-distance runners, and swaggering, self-conscious 'legends' who combine to scratch out a living or a niche, or a phantom-image of both, in the traveling world of music. And without making a movie that makes an issue of shattering any conventions, Grosbard still plays as though there are no rules, dilating the song performances for much longer than usual in a non-concert film, and often back-to-back, almost the way David Cronenberg used the sex scenes in Crash..."

Keep reading for more on Georgia's unimprovable acting, terrific music, and terse but adventurous direction, and for why all this matters to you if you loved Rachel Getting Married, or if you loyally love the Oscars but don't always know why.