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Video Review |
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Video Review |
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Last Updated 09/27/02
Email: robitai@our-town.com
“A Texas Funeral”
I’ve lived in Texas all my life, so I generally take offense when Hollywood types make movies about Texas and get it all wrong. How many times have you suffered through a movie where characters slur their words and use y’all in the singular? Where they drive Cadillacs adorned with long horn hood ornaments and talk about the size of their spread? Burdened with my suspicious nature, I rented “A Texas Funeral” just to see how wrong Hollywood had it.
To my surprise, this movie’s not all that bad. These are weird people first and Texans second. Their accents never get in the way, and the bizarre story line’s fun. Watch for family high-jinks, ghosts, and camels.
“A Texas Funeral” is a tightly unified movie. Everything centers on a single event – the funeral of the Whit family patriarch Grandpa Sparta Whit (Martin Sheen). The opening sequence looks like something out of the Twilight Zone, but it conveys vital information about the Whit men. They have ears that inspire ladies into fits of passion. No woman can withstand the attraction of the male Whit ear.
It’s no surprise that recently widowed Murtis Whit (Grace Zabriskie) just can’t stand to be parted from her dearly beloved’s ear. Scissors in hand, she de-ears Sparta’s corpse, taking only the left ear, which she obviously preferred.
Enter Little Sparta (Quinton Jones), Grandpa’s diminutive grandson and namesake. Lurking near the casket, but undetected by Murtis, Little Sparta witnesses her macabre business. That alone might be enough to send a normal child into apoplexy, but Little Sparta’s made out of sterner stuff. It prepares him for his encounter with the ghost of his dead grandfather, who casually introduces him to several generations of Whit men. It’s a rite of passage a lesser man would not survive.
All the Whit relatives gathered for the funeral have interesting stories of their own. Everything’s drawn along gender lines in a kind of Tennessee Williams nightmare. The Whit women have been lucky to survive. The Whit men and their ears negotiate the world without subtly, making “macho” the flavor of the day.
At some point in the movie I decided that I was not offended by the depiction of these Texans. As a matter of fact, I know some of these people. The characters all have strong connections to place, but the movie’s narrow focus so defines their circumstances; that they essentially become caricatures.
Although this movie may be too strange for some tastes, it does remind us that connections to our blood kin run deep, sometimes in ways we don’t suspect. And that’s something that crosses all boundaries.
Rated R
for sexual content and some violence
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