Grey Gardens (on DVD)

1975 documentary Grey Gardens has become a cult classic ever since its release and spawned an undying interest in its subjects. Currently the musical, Grey Gardens, is earning rave reviews on Broadway. There are also talks that a feature film based on the documentary, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange, is also in the works.

After watching the documentary, I don’t understand where all the hoopla comes from and why people are so fascinated with other people’s misfortunes. The movie made by two brothers, Albert and David Maysles, centers on two eccentric real-life figures. Grey Gardens was the estate where Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale and her middle-aged daughter “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale lived in almost complete isolation for more than twenty years. They gained some notoriety when National Enquirer exposed their squalid living conditions and revealed them as aunt and first cousin to the famous Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The entire time while watching this movie I felt sick, angry and puzzled. The mixed emotions were not a result of powerful filmmaking. In fact the movie looks like some amateur family video. I don’t think Maysles Brothers had done much work. The two Edies were the best performers any director could have dreamed of. Actually the two ladies both had ambitions in performing professionally when they were young. Now in their old age, they still lived in their past and refused to acknowledge the present. Maysles Brothers did not show us how the mother and daughter came to be in the state they were in. They were only interested in showing the eccentricity of the pair. It is so obvious that these two individuals were deeply mentally disturbed. The entire movie borders on exploitation of the sick and the weak. There is no obvious reason as to why Maysles Brothers needed to make this documentary except to satisfy people’s curiosity about the rich and the famous even if they were only rich in the past and only famous by association. It was really the beginning of the cultural downfall that is now in full swing in the wake of Anna Nicole Smith’s death.

Big Edie and Little Edie were such tragic figures that they could have walked off the pages of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie or A Street Car Named Desire. Like the mother and daughter in The Glass Menagerie, they also called Maysles Brothers “gentleman callers” when they came to film. It is heart-breaking to see their sadness and loneliness to be explored on screen for public consumption. Even if they had wanted their last shot at being stars, any responsible filmmakers should have had the decency to do the right thing. What they needed was not a camera to follow them and then desert them. They needed professional help!!!