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“Grey Gardens” is a one-of-a-kind documentary exploring a mother-daughter relationship. These aren’t just two anonymous people though; instead, the film chronicles Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, “Little Edie,” who just happen to be the aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. The filmmakers, Albert and David Maysles, initially intended the film to be about Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill. However, after being introduced to Edith and Little Edie by Lee, they decided to shift the focus.
What makes these two women so interesting? First, they live in a giant decaying mansion (the titular “Grey Gardens”) in luxurious East Hampton. The family was extremely wealthy at one time, until Edith divorced and lost most of her money. She apparently stayed in the 28-room Grey Gardens mansion despite a lack of money for upkeep. The women show pictures of themselves from years earlier, and they were obviously beautiful society scions. However, they became more and more isolated from society as they hunkered down into their mansion At one point, the mansion was even raided by East Hampton officials, who wanted to evict the pair due to the unsanitary living conditions. Jackie subsequently helped them clean up the mansion.
All of this action, though, occurs before the film starts in 1975 (some of the back story is presented in pictures and newspaper stories). In fact, in the documentary, not much new happens: the women continue their bizarre existence in the mansion and argue. They argue a lot. Every conversation is filled with their remembrances of better times, when Little Edie was desired by wealthy men and Edith carried on an affair with a pianist. This life is so far removed from their current surroundings, and their regrets about that disparity quickly surface. Apparently, Little Edie had been living in NYC in the 1950s, before her mother had her come back home to take care of her. This arrangement was only supposed to be for a short time, but 24 years later, they are still at Grey Gardens and arguing.
Although the movie focuses on relatives of a very famous woman, the themes of living in the past and experiencing regret are so universal. The women have in many ways a typical mother-daughter relationship, but it’s also so atypical. Quite simply, they live a rather deluded existence, arguing so passionately about past events as though it still mattered or was in the present. Neverthless, the women are fascinating on so many levels, including Edie’s fashion style. Throughout the film, Edie models numerous outfits that she’s created, all accompanied by a turban. Whether she’s bald or just loves turbans is never explored. Funnily, Edie’s bizarre style has become somewhat of an ironic fashion inspiration; the DVD even features Todd Oldham explaining that he has actually used Edie’s fashion sense while designing a number of outfits!
Some people have criticized this documentary for a variety of reason, including calling the filmmakers exploitative. I don’t think that the Beales were exploited – they are both intelligent although somewhat deluded women and likely understood the implications of participating in this filming. Others have said that the material is somewhat suspect – are the Beales “worthy” of a documentary? That’s a judgment call each viewer will need to make. I enjoyed it – the film is like nothing else I’ve ever seen. Although the Beales are deluded at times, their relationship is like a Tennessee Williams play sprung to life! I wasn’t able to turn away, and I know that these women will stick with me for a long time. Most highly recommended.
The DVD extras include original trailers and a fascinating commentary track featuring the Maysles and their associates. They fill in many of the blanks about the film. Fortunately, the DVD includes subtitles, as the women constantly talk over each other during their arguments. You needn’t miss a single word of this hypnotic documentary.
This stellar portrayal of two women, a mother and daughter, who spend their days in a run down house and are ironically aunt and cousin to Jackie O, displays documentary film-making at its very best. Although much has been said about the film, the focus always tends to emphasize the sordid living conditions that Edith Bovier Beale and her unmarried daughter, Little Edie inhabit, in an old estate in Easthampton, New York. Their house has been condemned by officials in Easthampton, and they live with cats and raccoons, but they don’t give a damn about it. They are virtual recluses in their upscale community, “full of nasty Republicans.” However, the film is not about the squalor that most of us would balk at in conventional situations. Their surroundings are only a backdrop and metaphor for the lost opportunities, and isolation that the women are subjected to as societal outcasts. Whether this is by choice, or due to their eccentricities is a mixed bag, but “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” are such magnetically charged women, it is fair to say that they are their own superstars within the world they have created.
Much of the film’s pathos is magnified by the mother and daughter relationship. Little Edie, once a gorgeous, brilliant young woman feels she has been forced to sacrifice her life and a potential career as an entertainer, to look after her mother. Big Edie, once a veritable beauty in her day, was written out of her father’s will for her aspirations to become a singer, and after her divorce retreated to her sea-side estate to spend the rest of her days. It is apparent that both women are extremely co-dependent, but in spite of their inherent needs to look after each other, Little Edie is full of resentment over the arrangement. She points this out again and again, letting us know that when she is with her mother, she doesn’t feel like a woman, but rather a little girl. However, both have clearly been dominated by strict, critical male figures in their pasts, and they do enjoy a sense of freedom and independence in their solitude, even if it comes at the expense of their abilitiy to inhabit the outside world. Little Edie insists throughout the film, that she must get out and move to New York, “My days at Grey Gardens are limited” she tells the Maysles’ camera crew, who record every nuance with objectivity, and a keen eye for descriptive detail of both women and their amazing story.
This is a complex narrative, and it unfolds with intelligent, and often hilarious dialogue from both Big and Little Edie. Little Edie’s sense of fashion is truly “revolutionary” and has been copied and imitated by several designers. Big Edie is more staid, she has “had her cake, eaten it, chewed it, masticated it” while Little Edie emerges as a thwarted Goddess, who feels she never even got a bite of the cake, so to speak. She proclaims herself to be the “greatest dancer in the world” yet alone in the house with her mother, their is no other audience for her to creatively conquer. We watch her, and we are captivated by her, and we accept what she tells us, because she is so emotive and honest.
Fiction could never fully capture the beauty and the sadness that this film evokes. Although we love to laugh with it, it is also a poignant epic, magnifying moments in Big Edie and Little Edie’s lives with uncanny depth and awareness of the subjects. It is simultaneoulsy lyrical, funny and sad. Those who view it and do not understand that this is a masterpiece, are missing the point of this work. And what is that point? I believe it circles around the choices that are made for us, the choices we do make, and the choices we don’t make, and how our fates are are affected by these events.
I give “Grey Gardens” six stars, and I hope you enjoy it. It is a film that can be viewed several times, and there is always something new to discover every time it is screened.
The Maysles Brothers’ famous 1975 documentary of a former society mother and her grown daughter (both former cousins of Jackie Onassis and both named Edie Beale) falling to pieces in their similarly-dilapidated East Hampton mansion has acquired a consider cult following over the years due to the Miss Havisham qualities of its subjects, who once both were great wealthy beauties and have fallen to bare subsistence living (and who both seem clearly mentally ill). The Maysles have been greatly criticized for showcasing these women as circus oddities, but as little Edie makes clear in a tape-recorded interview included in this beautiful Criterion Collection edition, both women loved the chance to have the attention given to them; the film also made it possible for little Edie to follow her dream of moving to NYC to work, albeit briefly, as a cabaret star.
But it would also seem wrong simply to characterize the two women as free spirits doing their own thing and being fabulous, as many of the films’ cultists are mistakenly wont to do: GREY GARDENS at times seems a genuine hell for the women as well as for the viewer, who must endure the mother and daughter occasionally shrieking menacingly at one another over one another’s words. And Little Edie seems like a lost fourth sister from Chekhov, bemoaning her lost chances at matrimony and escaping to the big city. But both women seem intelligent despite their moments of mental confusion, and Little Edie’s editorializing during a Dr. Norman Vincent Peale radio broadcast (one of the film’s highlights) shows her sharpness as well as her wicked sense of humor. And it is precisely the discomfort that the film occasions — its refusal to sentimentalize these down-but-not-yet-out society survivors — that makes it seem so memorable, and such a comment on the American tendency to trash the past even while nostalgically clinging to its wreckage.
