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Jul 31, 2019 Web Exclusive By Matthew Roe

Historical films centered on events in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement have long been considered Oscar bait and box office pulls, with some of the more modern entries like Ava DuVernay’s Selma and Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman being among the most celebrated of the genre. However, on the flipside, films that offer fictionalized accounts of the era without the full scope of the systemic racism and racial control at the time are often heavily lambasted for their oversimplification, misinformation, and white savior narratives (see the reactions to Cry Freedom, The Help, and Green Book). This is exactly what walks hand-in-hand with Alan Parker’s 1988 feature Mississippi Burning, a film equal in its critical and audience eulogization and scorn. While times have changed, and the appreciation of the film have shifted, the conversation is by no means concluded, and continues into this new re-release.

Set in 1964, three civil rights workers go missing in Mississippi while attempting to register black voters. FBI agents Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) and Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) are sent in to investigate and soon hit a wall of silence from the local community, which is directly related to the muscle Sheriff Ray Stuckey (Gailard Sartain) and his deputies flex over the public. Soon several prominent members of the community are revealed to be highly active and vocal members of the Ku Klux Klan, including Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell (Brad Dourif), whose wife (Frances McDormand) soon reveals to the agents that the missing workers have been murdered. After the workers’ bodies are discovered, the agents charge headlong into imminent danger, pulling the surrounding neighborhood into the fight - while the fight starts off toothless and weak, soon the pair step over to the other side of the law to fight these criminals.

The film premiered December 2nd, 1988, and went on to make over $34 million at the box office, and be nominated for seven Academy Awards, with Peter Biziou taking home the one for Best Cinematography. However, in tandem with the considerable praise heaped on the production, and especially on its cast, there was a sizable repercussions from the activist and African American communities. From the passive depiction of southern black communities, southern white racists made caricaturistic, and bolstered heroism of the FBI, an organization infamously devoted to stamping out the civil rights and black power movements with little consideration, the movie is controversial to say the least. The fiery critic Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker, of the vigilante techniques employed by the agents, “...we’re put in the position of applauding the F.B.I.‘s dirtiest forms of intimidation. This cheap gimmick undercuts the whole civil-rights subject; it validates the terrorist methods of the Klan.”

Honestly, there are many facets of Mississippi Burning that warrant criticism, while other details absolutely do not, though this is of course from my own limited perspective. The biggest conflict I can see with this film, from its release to the present day, can be directly attributed to the factual foundations by which the film was constructed - even by Parker’s own admission, this film is not trying to be historically accurate. Just as the films mentioned in my opening, this narrative is based on an actual event, the 1964 Freedom Summer murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner; a case which wasn’t officially closed until 2016. Due to the film having so many similarities to the actual case and region in which it happened, all the while spinning a completely separate narrative based in fantasy, of course there was going to be backlash to a caucasian director and caucasian writer creating revisionist history to an ongoing investigation at the very heart of the Civil Rights era (released near the end of Reaganism, so that definitely plays a part).

However, all that being said, I still firmly believe that Mississippi Burning is a depressingly stark and resonant film, and while it certainly is not for everyone, is one of my favorite films of the late 1980s. While I disagree with numerous changes from the subject’s actual history, the narrative structure not only showcases the deepset systemic racial inequality and terrorism being acted out with impunity during this era (while somewhat cartoonish, it is comparable to how the klansmen rednecks are handled in BlacKkKlansman), but it also shed light on the federal and local governments unwilling to actually do much about it. Anderson and Ward are two diametrically opposing characters, with vastly different ideas and understandings about how to secure the truth and achieve justice. While the vigilante aspects can be seen to be built to be applauded (much in the way Dirty Harry and Death Wish are designed), it also highlights how these agents can ignore established legal frameworks with little repercussions in order to get what they want, which is highly representative of the actual tactics of the bureau at that time. Whether you cheer for their methods is up to you, but I feel that everyone is indicted in some way, regardless of their intentions or the ends achieved.

Mississippi Burning was released on VHS by Orion Home Video in 1989, with a Collector’s Edition released on LaserDisc in 1998. It was then released on DVD in 2001 by MGM Home Entertainment, which included an audio commentary track by Parker and the film’s theatrical trailer. It had a limited Blu-ray release in 2015 by Twilight Time, with only three thousand copies made available, but now Kino Lorber has re-released the film more widely on Blu-ray. However, besides the insightful and David Attenborough-esqe commentary by Parker, there isn’t much else offered besides the 4K digital scan of the original movie. Definitely better looking than its previous home release counterparts, it’s a bit of a let-down that there isn’t more material to flush out the release.

Stark, haunting, and unrelenting, Mississippi Burning remains a formidable entry into historical fiction, while remaining a hotbed of controversy that is still widely relevant even today.

(www.kinolorber.com/product/mississippi-burning-special-edition-blu-ray)