A Death in the Family

As I watched this movie, I felt as if a plastic bag was slowly closing in around my head. The acting was horribly stifling, and it was Bad Acting. The most brilliant piece of acting in the entire film was the guy who had to play laid-out-in-state-in-a-coffin. I felt nothing but relief when it was finally over. I was expecting that this film was going to be some real tragedy, with some deep psychological intrigue in the aftermath. All around it was stupid, no beginning, no climax, no ending, just rambling on and on, and the plastic bag kept getting worse. Let's get real here. This is an awful movie.

This fine production is a beautiful and faithful adaptation of the classic novel "A Death in the Family" about a 1915 Tennessee family with an almost idyllic life that is shaken with tragedy. In the lead role as Mary Follett, Annabeth Gish gives an amazing and touchingly real performance showing all the facets of this sensitive but strong woman who is a wife, mother, daughter, neice and sister to the other characters who are also excellently portrayed.

I hated this from the first minute and it pained me to watch. I ended up turning it off thee-fourths of the way through because it was just so gratingly insultingly woefully bad. Anyone who's read the novel will probably feel the same. There is not even an inkling of the darkly poetic drama of the novel--it's all bright and obvious and without any nuance--and it's quite disloyal as an adaptation. James Agee is the OPPOSITE of this adaptation's Hallmark-Hall-of-Fame style. I'm sure he'd punch the director, Gilbert Cates, right in the face or break a whiskey bottle over his head. Cates's previous film Collected Stories (2002) is stellar so I just don't know how he could get this SO WRONG!

A simply beautiful, powerful, exquisite gem of a film superbly acted and directed by Gil Cates. Ordinary events of turn of the century life spawn deeply felt emotion as a family struggles to right itself when one member is killed in a car wreck. The acting has you believing these are not superbly drawn characters from the Agee masterpiece but real people coping with the injustice of mortality. Watching the ensemble interact was like being in a family living room over a hundred years ago and going through the gut-wrenching reality of life at its most complex turning point. I have no idea why it received such a low rating from viewers. There are only a handful of movies ever made that combine the elements of storytelling so perfectly as this one and have you saying at the end that it was perfect. This is one of them. I'm reminded of the first time I viewed Paths of Glory or To Kill a Mockingbird among others where every piece of the puzzle fit. Give this one a look and you will not be disappointed.

This movie was horrible and corny. James Agee is rolling in his grave.This movie was nothing at all like the book and made a mockery of it. No one should see this movie unless they want to gag.