DC Film Society: Adam's Rib November 2019

Modern Classics: Eve's Bayou

Eve's Bayou, 1997 – written and directed by Kasi Lemmons. Produced by Samuel L. Jackson, Caldecot Chubb, Mark Amin, Eli Selden, Nick Wechsler and Julie Yorn. Key Cast: Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Debbi Morgan, Lynn Whitfield, Samuel L. Jackson, Jake Smollett, Ethel Ayler, Diahann Carroll, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Roger Guenveur Smith, Lisa Nicole Carson, and Branford Marsalis.

Roger Ebert named Eve’s Bayou the best film of 1997. Keep in mind that 1997 was one of the strongest film years in recent memory, featuring Titanic, L.A. Confidential, Good Will Hunting, Boogie Nights, As Good as it Gets, The Full Monty, Men in Black, The Sweet Hereafter, Jackie Brown, and Donnie Brasco. Still, the nation’s preeminent film critic not only praised Eve’s Bayou most of all, he repeatedly championed the film. Writer-director Kasi Lemmons credited Ebert for raising awareness of Eve’s Bayou. While not doing big box office, the film became a hit on the indie-arthouse circuit, and made a modest profit. All the same, 22 years later, this daring, textured, and beautiful film still feels underrated.

Eve’s Bayou was Lemmons’s directorial debut. Lemmons had worked primarily as an actress, with her most notable role as Clarice Starling’s best friend in The Silence of the Lambs. She loosely based the screenplay on characters and stories from her own family. Samuel L. Jackson loved the script and attached himself both as producer and star. Even with Jackson’s backing Lemmons still had to struggle to get the film made. Finally, Trimark Pictures, a small production and distribution company, signed on. Trimark had mostly been making cheap horror films and saw Eve’s Bayou as a chance to move into more serious fare.

Lemmons sets the stakes high early, with her narrator opening with “Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly on the brain. The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old.” The narrator continues with “My brother Poe was 9, and my sister Cisely has just turned 14. The town we lived in was named after a slave. It was said that when General John Paul Batiste was stricken with cholera, his life was saved by the powerful medicine of an African slave woman called Eve. In return for his life, he freed her, and gave her this piece of land by the Bayou. Perhaps in gratitude, she bore him sixteen children. We are the descendants of Eve and John Paul Batiste. I was named for her.”

Building off the narration, Lemmons introduces the characters through a party scene, similar to what Francis Ford Coppola had done 25 years prior with the wedding in The Godfather. Poe (Jake Smollett) is the apple of his mother Roz’s (Whitfield) eye, while Cisely (Good) is clearly her father Louis’s (Jackson) favorite. Middle child Eve (Jurnee Smollett) understandably feels left out. Louis, the town doctor, loves the attention he receives from the town’s ladies, Matty Mereaux (Carson) in particular. Louis and Matty shamelessly flirt and dance, even though they are both married to other people. Also like The Godfather, the festivities hide dark deeds behind closed doors, in this case Louis and Matty having sex in the carriage house until Eve having fallen asleep nearby, witnesses the whole thing and screams. That night, Eve’s aunt Mozelle (Morgan) loses her husband in a car accident. That’s her third husband who has died.

These two events, Louis’s affair, and Mozelle's widowhood, drive the rest of the story. Eve and her siblings learn too much too fast about the adults around them. Like many children that age they push boundaries and question what they have been told. Lemmons frames much of the movie from the children’s point of view. It’s through their eyes that we discover the self-contained world that Lemmons and her team created. This part of the Louisiana bayou is almost completely separate from the rest of the US. It’s the early 60s, and while African-Americans are fighting for civil rights throughout the country, it’s not an issue here. African-Americans are the entire population in this bayou. It’s their town and their history.

You can feel that history in every frame of the movie. The big trees stretching out and covering the land; the swamp with snakes and other critters. Lemmons creates a world so deep and lush that you believe there are many stories that could be told here; many secrets the swamp may be hiding. The colors are bright and vivid, even at night. The intense color sets up an effective contrast with the black-and-white visions Mozelle and Eve have.

These visions are part of a mystical current running through the film. Mozelle makes her living as a seer who helps her customers understand mysteries in their lives. Her rival Elzora, played by the late, great Diahann Carroll, is a more traditional fortune teller, full of voodoo and witchcraft. Louis and some others question the warnings and prophecies, but we in the audience don’t. The characters and their environment feel so vibrant and authentic that it’s easy to accept the magical realism involved.

As Lemmons takes us through the twists and turns, the story gradually becomes darker and more challenging. Memories become more central to what’s happening. Lemmons has the characters literally step right into their memories, visually eliminating any line between the past and the present. Like a few other great films, Rashomon chief among them, Eve’s Bayou also challenges the subjective nature of memory, showing how people mold their memories based on their hopes and fears. As the narrator explains, “The truth changes color, depending on the light.” The film trusts the audience by not answering every question, and letting us draw our own conclusions.

Seeing the film again, I understood how critical Terrence Blanchard’s music was to the tone and mood of the film. Blanchard, best known for his work with Spike Lee, accentuates the film with his evocative, mournful score. He adds much to the atmosphere that Lemmons created.

The same holds true for the actors. Lemmons draws out natural, fully realized performances from the young cast. Jurnee Smollett can move from playful to angry to anguished better than most adult actors. Meagan Good also shines as a girl who thinks she’s older than she is. Good internalizes the performance and then goes big at exactly the right times.

The adult actors also do not disappoint. Jackson uses his coolness and charm for Louis, who has a little too much of both. Whitfield imbues Roz with dignity, beauty and a hidden steely resolve. Carroll, cast against type, seems to have a much fun playing the scary, over-the-top Elzora. But Debbi Morgan as Mozelle is the standout. Mozelle blames herself for her husbands’ deaths. Morgan blends hurt and sadness with passion and an intense, fierce determination. Through her you feel how Mozelle wants to protect others from the pain that too often consumes her.

Ebert ended his review of Eve’s Bayou with “If it is not nominated for Academy Awards, then the academy is not paying attention.” Unfortunately the Academy didn’t pay attention, not nominating the film in any category. Even now, I have a tough time explaining this omission to myself. As I noted before, 1997 was an outstanding film year, so the competition was tough. But even so, Eve’s Bayou was more deserving than some of the selections. The Wings of the Dove snagged four nominations. Does anyone even remember that film? I think I saw it, but can’t say for sure.

My take is that, in the years way before “#OscarsSoWhite,” the Academy simply did not focus enough time and consideration on films with predominantly African-American films or filmmakers. The Academy voters were predominantly old, white and male even more than they are now. Women and minorities had often had trouble with this audience. Many of them had probably never even seen Eve’s Bayou. Trimark was also one of the smaller distributors, so it’s doubtful they would have had the resources for a substantial Oscars PR campaign.

Even without Oscar glory, Lemmons seemed to have a bright future. Eve’s Bayou was an amazing debut, and she seemed poised to join Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher and other contemporaries as Hollywood elites. But that didn’t happen. She’s made only four films in the 22 years since. That’s no reflection on her. She’s explained how she is constantly trying to get her movies made. Even with all of the focus on women and minority directors recently, it’s still tough for them to get the backing they need to make their films.

With Lemmons’s new film Harriet, a biopic about Harriet Tubman, opening soon, I’m hoping she will finally be able to garner the resources to match her talents. I’m hoping audiences may go back and find some of her other films, such as The Caveman’s Valentine and Talk to Me. More than anything though, I’m hoping that film lovers will rediscover Eve’s Bayou, the gem that started it all.

Adam Spector
November 1, 2019