Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Review
by James Sanford (jasanfor AT MCI2000 DOT com)June 14th, 1998
The last time he directed a screen adaptation of a best-selling book - Robert James Waller's "The Bridges of Madison County" - Clint Eastwood was working with a slender piece of fiction that required extensive reworking and fleshing-out. With John Berendt's "Midnight In The Garden Of Good and Evil," he faces exactly the opposite dilemma: You need not have read the book to suspect that, even with its generous two-and-a-half hour running time, the movie is a severely abridged version of a longer, richer story. That said, it should also be noted that much of what Eastwood has managed to capture is deliciously decadent, and it's crowned by a smashing performance by the always-mesmerizing Kevin Spacey as Jim Williams, the story's pivotal figure.
Even amongst the numerous eccentrics who populate sultry Savannah, Williams is a true character, a suave antiques dealer who's amassed a fortune in the past decade and isn't shy about showing off his money. "I'm nouveau-riche," he tells Town & Country magazine reporter John Kelso (John Cusack), "but then, it's the riche that counts."
But in the shadows of his lavish lifestyle lurks a slightly sordid secret life involving young hustlers and drugs. When Williams wraps up one of his sumptuous Christmas parties by shooting a young man he's been arguing with, he simultaneously blows off the door of his closet as well, and the skeletons come tumbling out.
New Yorker Kelso, who's in town to cover the annual holiday bash, finds himself perversely enchanted by Williams and the sundry other locals he encounters in the Georgia town. "It's like "Gone With The Wind" on mescaline!" he enthuses to his editor.
That proves to be only a slight exaggeration, what with a voodoo priestess, a local lunatic who keeps horseflies tied to his shirt, and a devoted servant who still tends to the ghost of a long-dead dog, all walking the streets. Topping them all is The Lady Chablis (played by, uh, herself), a showgirl who looks like Mary Wilson, talks like Cher, and behaves like a less-inhibited Madonna.
Each of these people is intriguing, but "Midnight" can't find the time to give each his/her due. Remember those "Want to know more?" buttons that surfaced throughout "Starship Troopers"? You'll be wishing they'd pop up here.
Eastwood packs many amusing and eerie moments into "Midnight," elegantly evoking both the wearying heat and the wild heart of Savannah, and treating his cast of eccentrics with a certain degree of dignity. By this time though, he ought to have learned that nepotism doesn't pay: Casting his son Kyle in "Honkytonk Man" handicapped that film, and putting daughter Alison in "Midnight" is a similar mistake.
While by no means a disaster along the lines of Sofia Coppola in "The Godfather III," Ms. Eastwood doesn't demonstrate much allure as the siren who puts the make on Kelso; the part seems to cry out for an Ashley Judd or a Mira Sorvino instead.
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