Georgia

'Georgia' is a strong, sometimes harrowing drama about the relationship between two singing siblings: the eponymous elder sister, an established country-folk star, and the less talented Sadie, who is actually the central character of this film. Jennifer Jason Leigh is in her element as the self-destructive, self-loathing Sadie, and delivers perhaps her finest performance; but Mare Willingham is also good in the subtler role of Georgia, a woman whose capacity to feel compassion has been tested to the limit, and which only survives when focused through a prism of superiority. Georgia is instinctively careful with words but Sadie compulsively goads her into betraying these instincts; the telling dialogues between them are constructed with a deadly precision, the high points of a generally excellent screenplay. What's also surprising is that the music is also good. In any film about art, a central problem for the director is creating a belief in the merits of the fictional work; in 'La Bellie Noiseuse', for example, Jean-Jacques Rivette created an explicit plot justification for not having to show the painting that is the film's centrepiece to his viewers, rather than letting us judge it. By contrast, in this film, Georgia sounds genuinely good, while Sadie veers between downright awful and almost interesting; this allows the film to actually use the music as a means of conveying the narrative of the story. This slows the pace of the film, and if you don't like the types of music played, might be excruciating; but it's interesting to see the (fictional) truth conveyed through the medium of performance.

One of the film's strengths is that it grants us no indulgent fantasies; because of this, the narrative arc is limited (especially as the film is quite long). In some senses, the film resembles other great films about the self-destructive, like 'Five Easy Pieces' or 'Naked'. It's not quite in that class, but it's double-headed structure makes it more reflective, less visceral, but by no means uninteresting. Overall, it's an unjustly neglected work.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is an incredible actress, climbing into a character and making you feel what the character feels. She accomplishes that to an intense degree as Sadie Flood in "Georgia." The problem is that I didn't really want to feel what Sadie felt. She scared and disgusted me. Mare Winningham (who knew she had such a clear, sweet singing voice?!?) matches Leigh's believable portrayal, but had a more sympathetic character with which to work. The stand-out, though, is Max Perlich as Sadie's worshipful husband/doormat. My heart broke for him. While the acting was strong, I found this film exhausting and kept checking to see how much time was left - it felt more like an assignment than entertainment.

Sadie is desperately looking up to her older sister Georgia who is a famous C&W artist. Sadie wants to be a famous artist like her sister, but is always doing everything wrong. Her desperate need to be accepted by her sister is constantly complicated by her drug and alcohol problems.

Beyond anything else you can say about this film, it is a showcase for Jennifer Jason Leigh. She not only stars -- and sings -- but produced the film, and along with her mother (Barbara Turner) wrote the script, based on a real-life experience.

The casting of Ted Levine is interesting. Apparently he was cast to help distance him from the "Buffalo Bill" image he had acquired. But they made little attempt to modify his look. He still looks very much like Buffao Bill, though he is quite capable of altering his appearance by merely growing a mustache (see "Monk").

This film presents a fairly accurate portrayal of the chaotic, symbiotic environment of the bar band music scene. If you are looking for a coherent, one-two-three plot and are expecting realism at the same time, forget it. You would be missing the point. Having "been there" and "done that", I can affirm that this movie does a pretty good job at portraying interesting and realistic snapshot views of people in this particular music genre. In addition, this film even goes so far as to attempt realistic discriminations between different types of musicians (e.g., between ones who want to just succeed, ones who just want to play, ones who can't get their lives together enough to make it, starving artists, etc.).

This film initially may seem innocuous and even simplistic to some casual viewers. I must admit that I didn't get much the first time I casually viewed it. "Georgia" is very layered and textural -- the more you stand back and look, the more you can almost reach out and touch it -- but, as with most true art -- one must stand back and really take a look at it to appreciate the many layers. The layers of this particular artwork is done via multiple, sometimes concurrent, relationships, which intermittently share the foreground and the background with some really great music and various elements of the music scene. There is the relationship between Georgia and Sadie -- of course, the most obvious relationship that maintains precedence, but if you spend too much time on this one, you will miss so much. There is the Sadie-Axel layer; the Sadie-Georgia's husband layer; the Sadie-Herman layer; the Sadie-and the music layer; the Sadie-Sadie layer; the Sadie-drugs layer; the Sadie-father layer; on and on. All these relationships involving Jennifer J.L's character puts a lot of pressure on J.J.L, and I think she brings it about beautifully. I don't find her "overacting" in any scene -- the only "overacting" that is done is done by Sadie, not by J.J.L.

J.J.L. has rarely disappointed me in her character portrayals. I have always found her an interesting sort of actress: she does not have that obvious physical "stand out" star quality about her, but more of a quiet, well-played character actress, genuine star quality about her. I think she, along with the other actors in this movie, did a terrific job with very difficult material (about a very unusual and difficult, but interesting, lifestyle), and this movie calls out to me to watch it every time it plays on my satellite service.

This movie should not be judged along with "standards". It is a rare piece of filmwork, and should be judged entirely on its own standalone merits.

Usually I like films that are good character studies, but Georgia fell flat as a character study. At almost two and a half hours long, the film grew dull and too long very quickly. I have the highest regard for Jennifer Jason Leigh's work as an actress/writer/producer, but I can only hope that her real singing is much better in real life than in this movie! It's just that Leigh's Sadie is an unlikeable, unsympathetic character, and her and Georgia's sibling rivalry is not gone into nearly enough detail to MAKE Sadie a sympathetic character. Mare Winningham does a very good job, and the woman has some beautiful pipes! Who knew? An OK film, but with the talented Leigh at the helm, it should have been MUCH better.