Monday, September 06, 2010

Birmingham

4 Little Girls (1997)
directed by Spike Lee
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

I recently used this as an example of how I seem to spend more time crying during movies and TV shows than I used to, but followed it up with a joke about Dumb & Dumber. Specifically, the scene where Lloyd turns on the waterworks during a commercial. I think he wipes his tears with hundred dollar bills, but like Kenny Powers yelling at Wayne and Dustin Jr., I don't have the creative capacity to say something constructive about a story as heartbreaking as 4 Little Girls without sounding like an asshole. By which I mean that there's nothing I can add to a conversation about good people and bad people that isn't conveyed better by these mothers and fathers who grew old with daughters dead and buried decades ago. The South is routinely condescended to in the national narrative, but these families are testaments to why that is a disservice to so many of the people who live there, and to what they have given the country that so many of their neighbors take for granted.