Mississippi Burning 4K 1988

I am extremely sensitive to the subject of racial and national discrimination and intolerant of any expression of fascist ideas and sentiments in the reality around me. Apparently, against the background of such feelings of my own, I perceive movies that deal with the problems of racism more emotionally than critically. I quite admit that to Alan Parker's social drama 'Mississippi Burning' a picky viewer can make claims about the lack of structure of some dialogues, occasional slipping notes of naivety in their content and general time-delay of the narrative itself.

All the above-mentioned disadvantages are certainly present, but Parker's brilliant directing, which throughout the film step by step and at a steady pace forms a tense, thunderous atmosphere of social explosion in a small American town, overshadows by its sophistication any reason for critical analysis of individual shortcomings that do not seem significant in the overall positive assessment of the picture. 1964. The U.S. South is gripped by a universal feeling among whites of implacable racial hatred toward their African-American fellow citizens. Separate toilets for blacks and whites, separate seats in cafeterias, oppression of the black population in all kinds of civil rights is elevated by unspoken rules into the framework of generally accepted behavior, because the local administrative authority is half of the members of the militant Ku Klux Klan.

Two FBI agents played by Hackman and Defoe arrive in a godforsaken backwater town in Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of three representatives of the Committee for Civil Rights. Forced to confront a town hostile to uninvited outsiders, almost all of whose white population are hardened racists, the detectives' active efforts to establish the truth in the case of the missing civil rights activists inadvertently provoke the detonation of a long-ripening interracial conflict.

Loyal to the arbitrariness of racists judges, prosecutors, mayors and sheriffs, ordinary ordinary Americans - fathers of families, women and children, whose moral consciousness has been deformed artificially planted for decades by the policy of superiority of one race over another - Alan Parker has fully reflected these essential points in his colossal work on the scale of the topic covered. And tears of sympathy and delight in the eyes of a woman with the appearance of an average American housewife, with awe listening to the fiery propaganda speeches of the local leader of the racist organization at the next meeting, fully demonstrates to the viewer the depth of the perversity of the worldview of ordinary people.

Non-trivial plot combinations of detective thriller, which are saturated with a deep in the degree of its elaboration of the script and the dynamism of developing events make watching the movie a very exciting activity. It is quite natural that the criminal storyline in Alan Parker's film is marked less brightly and accentuated than its obvious acute social idea, the synthesis of drama with the genre of detective thriller is designed only to more firmly fix the viewer's attention on the screen shown absolutely egregious cases of crazy bacchanalia of fascist perverts, which took place in the sixties of the last century in most of the southern states of the American state.

Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe, who played the main roles, successfully contrast in the variety of individual character traits and the manner of behavior of the heroes, but Hackman, of course, overplayed his colleague, and screen time is given to him a little more. Gene Hackman managed to marvelously enter his image, to create once and for all memorable viewer type of cynical, cold-blooded, but at the same time, principled and honest before his conscience of the servant of the law. A wonderful role, one of the best in the career of the great actor. In 1989, the film 'Mississippi Burning' won the cinematographic award 'Oscar' in the category of 'Best Cinematography'.

The film was nominated for six nominations for the American Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture. Gene Hackman claimed the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, and Frances McDormand was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. And let anyone try to say that 'Mississippi Burning' is a bad movie after my review and listing these academic merits, such words will be a manifestation of common hypocrisy.