Grey Gardens - 1975 - 3½ Stars

Grey Gardens in the title of this documentary refers to the name of a mansion in the Hamptons on Long Island that has fallen into serious disrepair. The aged Edith Beale - aunt to Jackie Kennedy - still lives there with her daughter Edie. The film is basically an examination of their incredibly bizarre life.

Grey Gardens is very forthright about its documentary-ness - the two women will often talk to their interviewers, the interviewers will often talk back. It does not try to hide the pretense of being a film - i.e. we're put at a greater distance by the fact that everyone involved is very aware they are on film, and are aware of that awareness. Normally I'd be put off by such a thing - I'd think that the Beales are merely playing up who they are for the cameras. However, one thing I noticed about their home is that it lacks a television, and the Beales rarely refer to movies in their strange pastiche of bygone days, songs, and musicals that passes for their communication. Therefore, they don't seem obsessed with fame in the same way that certain 'freaks' in America are (e.g. Jerry Springer guests), and I didn't get the sense they were acting.

Like Errol Morris's Gates of Heaven, Grey Gardens is sometimes boring or repetitive, but also like Gates, certain images in the film linger long after it is over. This film is regarded as a 'camp classic', but laughter seems like the wrong response to it - it is ultimately a film about the Pyrrhic triumph of imagination and memory over the bleakest and most lifeless reality, which doesn't seem too funny, at least not to me.