The Best Movie Critic   +  review

I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen Grey Gardens; sufficed to say it’s somewhere between a bunch and a fucking million times. It makes a perfect Screensaver movie – the one you put on in the background while you’re ironing or arranging your bookshelf. Grey Gardens is a seminal Camp Classic, and one that truly blurs the line between Camp, Art and rank exploitation of the mentally ill. It’s reality TV before we knew how satisfying it is to be a voyeur, and the definitive feel-bad film of the 1970s. It is, quite simply, a goddamn masterpiece. Hyperbole intended.

Grey Gardens is a documentary by the Maysles brothers capturing about a year in the lives of Big and Little Edie Beale, two long forgotten mother & daughter cousins of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, who have squandered their wealth and social standing by essentially boarding themselves up inside a decrepit East Hampton manse. The supporting cast consists of their teenaged gardener, Jerry (who Little Edie calls “The Marble Faun”), a couple other local eccentrics who show up for a birthday party about halfway through, and the hundreds of cats, raccoons, and other creatures that also call Grey Gardens home. There’s not much ‘plot’ to speak of, just a meandering tour the women’s crumbling mental state and housing situation as they fight, reminisce, and try and recapture whatever limelight they once had. It is exploitative, to be sure, but the two Edies complicity in their own exploitation and their willingness to mug for the camera makes you feel a little better about the whole sordid mess. Although it was small (albeit controversial) success when it first premiered in 1975, Grey Gardens has gone on to inspire a Broadway musical, fashion collections, TV movies, and a cottage industry of feel-bad reality shows (including my favorite, Hoarders). It was unavailable on VHS or DVD for years before the Criterion Collection (God bless ‘em) restored and rereleased it, and the Beales were reborn to a new generation (lucky you, it’s also available on Netflix instant streaming). Despite its vast cultural influence, it still flies slightly under the radar in the annals of film history – seemingly only truly embraced by Camp fetishists, gay guys, and Drew Barrymore.

Cinéma vérité is, by definition, “truthful cinema” (thanks, Wikipedia!), and Grey Gardens certainly does give us visual truth in unflinching quantities. In a mere 100 minutes, we see the ample side-boob of a 58-year-old hoarder, raccoons eating Wonder Bread, a cat shitting on a priceless oil painting, Big Edie smearing canned cat food on a cracker and calling it pâté – and these are just the truly indelible images. Grey Gardens isn’t Shoah – there was no true need for anyone to bear witness to the Beale’s lives. – and yet I am forever thankful that someone did. They’re not inspiring, per say, but they’re not not inspiring either. As Little Edie says in one of the film’s most memorable diatribes:

… in dealing with me, the relatives didn't know that they were dealing with a staunch character and I tell you if there's anything worse than dealing with a staunch woman... S-T-A-U-N-C-H. There's nothing worse, I'm telling you. They don't weaken, no matter what.

The Beales of Grey Gardens exist in a strange in-between space of depressing and hilarious. They seem, for the most part, very self aware of how absurd they look and act, but don’t seem to care. Little Edie wears a succession of outfits cobbled together from bathing suits, turtleneck sweaters (as skirts, mind you), and scarves, but refers to them as “costumes” – I’ll let her explain:

This is the best thing to wear for today, you understand. Because I don't like women in skirts and the best thing is to wear pantyhose or some pants under a short skirt, I think. Then you have the pants under the skirt and then you can pull the stockings up over the pants underneath the skirt. And you can always take off the skirt and use it as a cape. So I think this is the best costume for today.

Grey Gardens is endlessly quotable. Truly almost everything that comes out of Little Edie’s mouth is a readymade ringtone. It helps that her accent, some kind of New York / Boston / Upper Crust hybrid, is easy to mimic, yet hard to perfect.

The pervasive tone of melancholy that permeates the film makes it a little more worthwhile than most of the films I’ve written about. It has the mise-en-scène of a Tim Burton movie, but minus the whimsy. Ultimately Grey Gardens is the story of time passing, and each human being’s inability to be the person we thought we could be when we were young and beautiful. It’s about, if not broken promises, then certainly forgotten ones – also old ladies eating cat food. -Ryan *A note about the "sequel", The Beales of Grey Gardens. Don't bother. It's a feature length deleted scenes featurette - not a movie. I mean, I totally own it, but only because it came in the boxed set…