Mississippi Burning

Rating:
Summary: Mississippi Burning
Review: I briefly saw this movie several years ago, it depicts very well the way things were. I met the brother of one of the men who got caught up in the ones who were guilty. He did prison time, even tho he allegedly did not do anything. I am proud to have this in my collection, i want my children/grandchildren to see what it was like when the world was so cold, hatred was rampant towards the blacks. I was glad to have someone so close to the story tell me all the details that I have remembered. It is a very good movie, it was well worth any price I might have paid for it. The fact that it was not computer generated made it even better, as I see it.

Rating:
Summary: The South in Turbulent Times.
Review: One producer stated that this movie was the best of its decade. I agreed. The subject matter was explosive, but not as much as in the book Mary Winstead wrote almost a decade after the movie was released. In it, she searches for the truth of what happen in her father's homestate of Mississippi.

She simplifies the location of this horrific crime which happened on June 21, 1964, because as she said, 'the nation had ignored what was happening there for more than a century.' "Ever since the Civil War, the South has had people pointing fingers at them and telling them they're wrong and there's naturally resentment. Nobody likes that."

She claims that her fidelity to her Southern heritage allowed her to "explore the roots of hatred, fear, and ignorance which caused people to commit the unthinkable in the context of a family, a community and even a nation that didn't want to admit it was happening." She feels guilty in a way, writing "If I could, I'd erase all the painful things discovered in my family." Her assertion that the residents there in Meridian believed that the whole thing was a "hoax," is interesting.

Her father's secretiveness about his past and family in Mississippi was a necessary evil, even though he had left that area in 1940. She'd visited her relatives there first when she was thirteen years old; fourteen years later, she returns with her young children. This time, they came through Memphis, TN, in 1982 when Knoxville had the World's Fair.

Her father, coming from rural Mississippi, had an unsatisfied wanderlust and gambled to cover his restlessness and feeling of being unanchored, so far away from his life on the farm a thousand miles south if you follow the map through Louisiana. She tells the family history of her father in fragments, visualizing photographs, and using a selective memory behind the wall of consciousness hiding pertinent secret facts. The cover photo shows a typical small town in the South. It could be many places but, with the railroad track beside the main part of town, I think of Tullahoma, TN, where they have the same phenomenon for several blocks in the middle of town.

The obsolete places where you could order all the fried catfish (there's nothing better!) you could eat are still alive and thriving in North Alabama, just across the TN line. Of course, the price is no longer just a dollar! Her description of a long gone roadhouse without a name, just the word CAFE stenciled in big letters across the side could be in Middlesboro, KY, today.

Like me, she had the false impression that antebellum meant a big Southern plantation house with tall white pillars across the front. After all, that's the way the South was presented in the movie, 'Gone With the Wind.' In Knoxville, an old brick building downtown (no pillars anywhere) is being renovated to its original shape, and I was told it was one of the few existing antebellum houses left standing in this town. I couldn't believe it, as it was as far from a plantation home as anything could be. My source, a history researcher, explained that antebellum means "before the (Civil) war." How foolish I felt. But that's the image her father drew with his comment, "The closest we ever got to antebellum."

Since I am a KAT bus rider, I could appreciate her version of how her mother got around her hometown (when the father was not playing Chauffeur): the #6 bus would take her north to her mother's in Linden Hills, or on downtown to the doctor's office and other places she frequented; southward, it went to a Mall in Edina, where her father worked.

She speaks of living on the right side of the tracks and described one of the racial demarcation lines, separating the whites from the blacks. Even though Knoxville is in the South, I too grew up in a segregated environment not so different from hers. She grew up in Minneapolis in the 1950-60s, and recalls "I'd had no firsthand contact with anyone of color." Her awareness of racial issues was limited to what she saw on television. But Mississippi apparently was different.

She relates how bootlegging was under the control of the sheriff's office for decades, delivering liquor to the roadhouses in the trunks of patrol cars -- and how rapes, murders and other crimes were ignored or not investigated. If local history is correct, this town where I lived almost drown in the liquor industry in those early years. Now, it seems to be getting legal again as many drinking places are on the main street of town and the drinkers sit out on the sidewalk to partake of their favorite beverage.

She had to delve deeply and cause bad feelings in her search for the truth, a truth better left hidden. In 1997, researching her heritage, she discovers 'parts of the family history that everyone would just as soon forget.' When delving too deeply, she learned secrets about the civil rights murder which had happened thirty years earlier, she was snubbed by her father's family. So why did she persist? What is right about revealing injustices from a personal viewpoint with embarrassing family secrets? What's the purpose of airing 'dirty laundry' in public -- most families have if you look deep enough.

This memoir written by an English teacher in her hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is disturbing as she looks back at her paternal roots in Mississippi and considers the South as being the same as the homeplace of her father.

To show that the turbulent times as depicted in this movie still existed much later in time, I have used this means to fulfill a goal.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful movie, great acting
Review: This true story took place in Mississippi. Three civil rights leaders were found to be missing, and shortly thereafter the feds are sent in to solve the crime. In this movie three 'men died 'neath the Mississippi moon' ("Oxford Town" by Bob Dylan), and I have to add, from my own personal experience, my aunt died violently too in Mississippi. I saw this movie when it came out at a movie theatre in my hometown of Memphis, TN. In the row or so behind me and the friend I went with, several african-american girls sang softly the few hymns that were sung in this movie. Wow, was that moving; it made me realize that the story was all too real, and it happened in my own backyard so to speak. But funny things happen in the South as this movie reveals.

Rating:
Summary: A finger touching a warm coal !
Review: Thsi film is deeply disturbing and since it meant the best film of that year, the film was respectfully neglacted and ignored.
The awful facts told refer to that troubled sixty decade , where the racial question was in a boiling point.
The murderers of black citizens will lead to both investigators (Hackman and Dafoe) each one with his own methods to find out the clues who carries him to the truth .
The Ku Klux Klan concerns and consequences was never best filmed since the times of The birth of a Nation of David Griffith.
Frances Mc Dormand made a glorious work in this brave and well done work of Alan Parker.
Gene Hackman performance in this picture deserved to him the Silver Medal in Berlin as best actor .

Rating:
Summary: Great Acting / Low Facts
Review: Historically fiction, but there is a great story here anyway. Excellent acting here too. A corrupt town in Mississippi full of racists and KKK clan are treating the black folk like slavery still existed in 1964 America. Not enough performances by black actors but when there is,, there are important messages.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful True Story of Racism
Review: "Mississippi Burning" is one of the best and most powerful films released in 1998, earning seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture. It stars Gene Hackman and Willam Dafoe. This provacative true story explores a Mississippi town that suffers terrorism from the Ku Klux Klan and other citizens. As two FBI agents investigate the disappearance of three Civil Rights activists, tensions between most of the town and they turn life threatening. Even the town police system and the sheriff try to stop the FBI agents. This film entails deeply how racism affects a nation. Its strong intensity has the impact to force a reality check to many audiences.

Its brilliant plot wonderfully presents itself throughout the film. Its strong emotion wonderfully honors those victims as it should. Some may consider this piece an educational film. Its shock value hits audiences in the level it should. The research of the events and racism itself is always present, including conservative town surroundings that blend with the 1964 styles. The great performances from Hackman, Dafoe, and Frances McDormand capitalize the plot's powerful effect. Without them, this film wouldn't have the same meaningful theme.

Such tremendous film quality makes "Mississippi Burning" a guaranteed audience pleaser. After many years, its theme never loses its meaning regardless number of viewings. This will surely become a film classic in the next following years.

Rating:
Summary: a racist america!
Review: A racist America!, August 6, 2004
A Kid's Review
One can see the supression of the black people from the first scene. The Documentar reports shot the racist scene of the 60's.
1. The two FBI men like Dafoe and Hackman tried to disolve the problem in the deep south by hunting the KKK members. Though they failed to disolve the problems...The black men are in misery again
2. The two protagonists are white guys and the white guys dominated the roles again,...where are the black heroes in this film?
The white guys on again -> the black men are still in misery!
3. The complicated problems which happened in the racist deep south, did not sorry anyone in the States, many citizens have just seen the tragedy but did not help them. Black men are in misery again.

Could USA be a tolerant State in the future? the answer blows everyone of us.