Mississippi Marsala

In Mississippi Marsala (1991) director Mira Nair examines racism, both in the American South and elsewhere, through a different lens. The South in this film provides a landscape known for a history of difficult racial relations. We see elements of this racism in the film, mere hints, really. The primary focus is on relations between African Americans and South Asian Indians. By focusing on these groups, Nair views race in a new and unfamiliar context that sheds light on more familiar discussions of the subject.

Nair parallels the experiences of an Indian family in Uganda and in Mississippi. The family regarded Uganda as its home. Meena, the daughter, has never even visited India. She knows no other country but Uganda. When Idi Amin foments racial discord in Uganda, and when Meena's father Roshan Seth makes comments critical of Amin in a BBC interview, the family is forced to leave, along with all other non-Africans. As Roshan Seth's African friend explains to him, "Africa is only for Africans now, black Africans." As a result the family moves to Greenwood, Mississippi, to run a hotel while Roshan Seth pursues law suits against the Ugandan government, seeking the return of confiscated property. Part of the reason why Roshan Seth and others like him were expelled is that they had become wealthy and had been accused of a certain clannishness—Indian families did not, for example, allow their children to marry Africans.

In Greenwood, Meena grows up. At the time of the story, she is 24. Her parents expect her to marry an Indian. In a minor car accident, Meena runs into the van of a carpet cleaner named Demetrius Williams, played by Denzel Washington. Demetrius, with the assistance of some white citizens in the town, has secured a bank loan to start a carpet cleaning company. He has been successful with the company and always pays his bank notes on time. After the accident, he and Meena begin to see each other and fall in love. When their relationship is discovered (they are found sleeping together in a hotel room by one of Meena's relatives), there are extreme reactions in the community from both sides of the racial fence. Meena's father forbids the relationship, though he rationalizes his opposition by saying that he does not want his daughter to suffer racism in the same way he did.

In a scene shortly after the car accident, one of Meena's relatives, a successful businessman in Greenwood, urges Demetrius not to file suit against his family because of the collision. He tells Demetrius that all non-white people are "colored" people, the point being that they all suffer racism and therefore share a common bond. On the basis of this common plight, he appeals to Demetrius, who assures him he has no plans to sue.

After Demetrius' relationship with Meena is discovered, however, the common bond disappears. The Indians unanimously oppose her relationship with a black man. The same relative who appealed to Demetrius not to sue in turn goes to white business owners in town and asks them not to do business with Demetrius' carpet cleaning company. He quickly loses all his clients and the bank threatens to repossess his van. White citizens of the town complain and joke about Demetrius' relationship with Meena. Meena's father decides to move back to Africa to prevent his daughter from involvement with Demetrius.

Demetrius receives criticism from family and friends, from the African American community in general, for his relationship with Meena. His sister accuses him of rejecting black women. His father accuses him of causing trouble. His father, whom Demetrius loves, has spent his life working in subservient roles. He appears to believe in the necessity of playing it safe, of not antagonizing the white power structure by any action or word that would seem to offend prevailing racial codes. In a sense, Demetrius by developing his carpet cleaning business has done the same—it is a service-oriented business, one involving manual labor, not one that threatens to upset the racial order in Greenwood.

Both sides—the Indians and the African Americans—reveal their racial clannishness and their own racist attitudes in reacting to Meena and Demetrius' relationship. Several short scenes show white citizens in Greenwood reacting to the fracas. One old man gleefully remarks on the problems that the Indian family is experiencing with the African American Demetrius.

The parallels that Nair has set up in the film—between Uganda and Greenwood, Mississippi, and between the Indians who have never been to India and the African Americans who have never been to Africa—work well. Both groups feel that where they are—Greenwood—is their home. Yet both groups experience conflict with other groups who see a specific racial identity associated with their citizenship in Uganda or in Greenwood--Uganda is for black Africans; Greenwood is for African-Americans, or for whites, but not for Indians.

Meena and Demetrius ultimately resolve their problems by breaking with their families and with Greenwood. They decide to move away and to work the carpet cleaning business together. The suggestion is that, given the racism both of Greenwood and of their families, this is the only way they can find satisfaction and happiness. This film therefore seems to argue that the solution to racial conflict does not lie in adherence to past traditions and beliefs but rather in living in the present, in accommodating oneself to present-day circumstances and situations.

In a sense this film is not so much about the South as it is about two groups of people who live in the South—Indians and African Americans—and specifically about Mira and Demetrius' families.

Mira Nair has an incisive sense of comedy and satire that comes through especially in her portrayal of various Indian characters in the film, especially one character in particular who covets his car and dresses and acts like a 1950s style Memphis hipster, with greased back hair, in the Elvis style. She's more careful not to satirize African American characters—perhaps she feels her identity as an Indian woman allows her a certain license in satirizing Indians, but not in satirizing other races. Yet she also has a genuine fondness for the humanity of all her characters —African, African American, Indian, or white. She recognizes the comic as well as tragic consequences that can arise from human conflict rooted in racial divisions.

Sharky’s Machine

In 1981, Burt Reynolds was approaching the end of the most significant decade of his career. It began in 1972 with the release of Deliverance, in which Reynolds played a straight role, one of the two most important roles in the film. It was a role that many thought could be his breakthrough into film—previously he had been mostly a television actor. Numerous films followed Deliverance, such as White Lightening (1973), W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings (1974), At Long Last Love (1975), Gator (1975), Semi-Tough (1977), Hooper (1978), The End (1978), and of course Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and its first sequel (1980). In these films we see Reynolds in a number of roles--as an action hero, a comedian, a romantic lead, even a musical star. But the roles for which he is best known are those in which he plays a boisterous comic Southern prankster—a fool-killer with a moralistic desire to upend corrupt authority and in general to run amuck. Reynolds has been trying to live down this persona, and at the same time to take advantage of it, for much of the rest of his career. He's shown an impressive flexibility in the kinds of roles he is willing to take, and at the same time a resilient energy that led to the renovation of his career beginning with Boogie Nights and more recent films. He's even been willing to parody roles that made him famous—see Without a Paddle (2004) and The Dukes of Hazzard (2005). Although everyone knows his name, he did not ever become the great actor and star he aspired to become—there is a difference, of course, between acting and being a star. Reynolds was a competent actor and for a time a big-name star but in neither case a name for the ages.

Sharky's Machine (1981) may be the film in which Reynolds sought to alter the stakes of his career. Not only does he play a big city detective, but he also directs the film, based on the novel of the same title by Georgia writer William Diehl. I haven't read the novel and so cannot consider the film in relation to its source. The film on its own grounds is a mess, wavering back and forth between gritty police drama, character study, and romantic potboiler. Demoted to the vice squad at the beginning of the film because of a shooting that killed a civilian—Sharky is a highly skilled detective who wants to redeem himself and who is naturally disposed to rebel against authority. He and other members of the vice squad (all of them suffer from an inferiority complex because the vice squad is the least desirable assignment for a police officer) become involved in investigating a high-class prostitute who is murdered before their eyes. She is having an affair with a candidate for governor, and also with an Italian crime boss (played by Vittorio Gassman) who controls the city's power structure, and much of the police station. The plot grows increasingly dense and complex, and the film is not up to the complexity. There is a moment in the film when two Ninja assassins attack a police informant—you know at this moment that the film is floundering. Ninja assassins have little to do with the rest of the film--except for a final encounter with Sharky on a boat in the middle of (presumably) Lake Lanier. Ultimately, as Gassman's hitman brother kills off Sharky's colleagues, the film resolves all these complexities by transmogrifying into a film about Sharky's love for (some might say voyeuristic obsession with) the high-class prostitute apparently killed before his eyes.

The film has the quality of a 1970s era TV crime drama. Kojak comes specifically to mind. The cast includes actors who often appeared in such dramas (Charles Durning, Earl Holliman, Henry Silva, Brian Keith).

Sharky's Machine is set in Atlanta. Reynold's choice of this film based on a Georgia book, the name of his production company (Deliverance Productions), and his use of Atlanta seems a deliberate effort to capitalize on his regional connections. Oddly, the film seems almost a deliberate attempt to reconceive Atlanta as a big national city with no regional distinctiveness. There is, of course, no reason why a film would need to adhere to preconceptions about how a regional city should be portrayed. What the film does for the most part is treat Atlanta as if it is just another version of Chicago or New York or Los Angeles. The music is decidedly non-regional—the brassy sort of music you would expect to hear in a film set on the strip of Las Vegas. Few characters speak with Southern accents, and the few who do are glaring, almost awkward exceptions. Reynolds himself underplays his accent—it's hardly apparent. One reason may be that many of the characters in the film may have moved to Atlanta from somewhere else. Even in 1981 Atlanta was beginning to take on its current character as a city of national and international dimensions (hence the Ninja assassins), but few people in 1981 would have thought of the city in that way, though many complained that it was losing, or had lost, its regional character. A few scenes are specifically tied to Atlanta—one in a night club where a blues band is playing (Atlanta is not known as a center of the blues, but at least the scene ties the film to the South), another set in the infield of Atlanta Stadium, where the Braves play. For the most part, Atlanta is presented as simply another big American city. The film as a whole is bland and without distinctive character. This may be a result of the director's failure to take advantage of the regional aspects of the city where the story takes place—doing so would at least have given the film a sense of place and a specific geographical identity. It might also have helped to emphasize what may be a theme of the film, with its Italian henchmen and Ninja assassins and police officers and bad men who seem to come from all over the nation—that the world is coming to Atlanta and one thing the world brings with it is big-time crime and corruption. (This is not to suggest that Atlanta did not already have enough crime and corruption of its own).

In 1982, Reynolds starred with Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It marked, in my mind, the end of his great decade. The South that provided the location for his most successful films had lost its commercial and cultural appeal (Ronald Reagan had whipped Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential elections), and Reynolds had demonstrated the extent and limits of his talents. He was at his best as the Southern prankster and good ol' boy, and neither Hollywood nor (apparently) Reynolds himself was interested in further incarnations of that role. The nation moved forward. Better romantic character actors made their way onto the scene, and Reynolds as a comic hero was no longer fashionable—a later generation of comedians replaced him. He would struggle for another fifteen years until appearances in such films as Boogie Nights (1997) and Mystery, Alaska (1999) brought about a resurrection of his career, though probably on the basis of terms he would not have chosen for himself.