THAT EVENING SUN

By Dianne L. Brooks

I made a reference to Hal Holbrook, the 84 year old star of this film, and realized that I, but few others remembered this incredible actor.  Maybe it’s because he grew up in South Weymouth, just down the road from where I grew up or maybe it’s because of his memorable performances as Mark Twain.  If you don’t know who he is, you will now because I’d be shocked if he didn’t receive an academy award nomination for this exceptionally skillful and penetrating performance.

Holbrook plays Abner Meecham, the kind of gruff old, southern farmer which is so often a hackneyed stereotype in Hollywood.  When we meet him he’s bored: relegated to a nursing home by his lawyer son Paul (Walton Goggins.)   A minute later he’s out the door, walking down a dusty road with his suitcase, heading back to his farm.  When  Abner happens upon the teenage daughter, Pamela (Mia Wasikowska), sun bathing in the front yard he barks at her to leave his house.  He’s even more furious  when he discovers that Lonzo Choat (Raymond Mckinnon) is her father and currently renting the property.  These two have a history of antagonistic feelings toward each other, which, however, doesn’t stop Abner from setting into the shack right next to the main house until “the whole thing is straightened out”.

The film is based on a short story, “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down” by southern writer, William Gay, the title of which comes from a Jimmie Rogers song of the same  name.  It’s the kind of small bittersweet story that seems to capture so much of what is romantic and yet frightening about southern culture.  There is a certain surface politeness, old world manners maybe and a slowness of pace, that languor that Tennessee Williams was very good at memorializing.  In the film, long shots of the humid green of a southern rural summer, together with the sense that you have to drive a long way to town, underscores the slower pace of the story.

But on the other side of the coin is the rage and violence that lurks close to the surface of that sweet summer. It’s the other side of every coin actually which makes the film, more than simply a regional one.  Just as we can see aspects of the German character Haneke’s White Ballon,  so can we a lot of the negative aspects of the southern one.  We root for Abner, we see the injustice, his displacement, yet he’s not just a sweet old man, there’s more to his story.   Ultimately the violence that emerges on both “sides” is at once surprising and not so: we see that something is coming yet we’re not sure  what.  It’s beautifully rendered close study of two characters not entirely in control of the events that have brought them together, the kind of film that barely gets made but which we always hope we can see more of.

That Evening Sun opens November 20, 2009.

Written and directed by Scott Teems, based on the short story “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down” by William Gay; produced by Laura Smith, Terence Berry, Raymond McKinnon and Walton Goggins; Director of Photography, Rodney Taylor; edited by Travis Sittard; music by Michael Penn.  Released by Freestyle.  Running time: 109 minutes.

With: Hal Holbrooks (Abner Meecham); Raymond McKinnon (Lonzo Choat); Carrie Preston (Ludie Choat); Mia Wasikowska (Pamela Choat); Paul Meecham (Walton Goggins);  Barry Corbin (Thurl Chessor) and Dixie Carter (Ellen Meecham.)