Review: The Rough South of Larry Brown
Gary Hawkins once again takes on the difficult documentary subject of the writer, the private, solitary artist, with his portrait of Mississippi author Larry Brown and his stories. On the surface Brown proves to be a more subdued subject than that of Hawkins' award-winning The Rough South of Harry Crews; Crews is larger-than-life, loud, opinionated, seemingly born for the camera. But Brown is a better writer, and Hawkins weaves his film with nuanced glimpses of the artist, his family, and short films of Brown's Carveresque stories. What separates Larry Brown from the commodity that is Southern Literature is that Brown's stories are about people, their lives, slow-turnings, and glimpses of revelation; they happen to be set in Mississippi, because that happens to be where Larry Brown, save for a stint in the Marines, has lived his life. In interviews in the film, Brown, in his rich drawl and tobacco-cured voice, reveals that he set high standards for his stories, listing a diverse and top-shelf range of influences. Perhaps most revealing about the man's life are conversations with Brown's wife, Annie, a strong woman who has had to struggle to understand the drive and determination, the solitude, of her husband. Hawkins, in a subtle choice, edits the interviews of Annie and Brown so as to hint at jealousy, infidelity, anger, and disappointment, never bowing to the media culture of scandal. The effect is a disarming, honest portrait of marriage and the writing life.
Hawkins' choice of Brown's stories to film is deft, and his technique even more so. His use of black-and-white still-photographs to tell a story of rural bar-culture infidelity creates a lingering dread. Samaritans is shot in a straight-forward fashion, getting the details so right you can taste the stale smoke and the metallic finish of cheap beer. Boy and Dog, shown from the point-of-view of its young protagonist, chillingly details a simple act with horrifying consequences. In all of the stories, Hawkins never fails to give center stage to the power of Larry Brown's words. In the end, the power of those words is matched only by the weathered face and weary eyes of Brown himself. Where Crews likes to hear himself talk, and is good at it, Hawkins gives Brown's face breadth and time on the screen, and silence, speaking volumes about his personal Rough South.