Junebug unfolds secrets

by Junius

Junebug is in the category of minor classic, something so satisfying that one wants to see it again (there are a few mystifying details on first viewing), to live again through all the details, with the conviction that everything will jell and bring further satisfaction. This is not deliberate mystification by the filmmaker; it’s just that the film slices into life, sometimes slowly, sometimes abruptly, and lets the truth like in the thing itself, without much exposition. Note, for instance, how the younger brother, surly at home, smiles all the time with his fellow workers on the job. It isn’t made anything of, it’s just something you notice. And at the end, the father seems to be preparing one of his little bird carvings as a gift to the departing wife, and then one realizes later that he didn’t give it to her. It was a judgment he made without knowing he was going to.

It’s the old town-mouse vs country-mouse theme, New Yorkers placed in rural North Carolina. The husband of the newlywed couple is taking his bride home. It could be cliché but it doesn’t come out that way. The characters behave out of the deep core of themselves. The southern drawl authenticates the drama, which is not, but the way, the least bit “documentary”.

It’s better than documentary on all the social questions. It gives a sense of what makes the “bible belt” tick. The film slowly makes you realize that the Christian religion down there is not just something that fills a gap (“what would Sunday be like without prayer meeting?”), nor an anti-depressant for occasional use. Jesus Christ is that presence in all moods and all steps taken that provides a way of talking about emotion. In the midst of the baby shower, the pregnant girl (a wonderfully formed character) starts a prayer and prays that she will be able to bring the child up “in Christ.”

This is no sectarian promise; she means that she wants to do her best for the child in every way. She also says to her moody young husband “God loves you as you are, but he loves you too much to let you stay as you are.” In other words, one’s best hopes are enunciated through the range of emotions that Christ is imagined to embody. That was the revelation in the film: That the southern Baptist throughout every day uses Jesus to enter a vocabulary of feeling; the habitual way of prayer allows in many generosities that would otherwise remain unuttered.

We don’t have to close our eyes to the bigotry, the low-brow stuff. But the comparison is challenging, even on our own terms. If we have identified with the city-mouse wife all along, in her determination to both succeed and be blameless, we have to reckon with the fact that she is slightly less attractive as she leaves then she was arriving and that our getting a little bird carving is not a foregone conclusion.

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