Grey Gardens

While watching HBO’s reimagining of Grey Gardens, I felt an usual feeling building up inside of me. It wasn’t until the film wrapped up that I figured out what it was: pure unadulterated longing. The act of attempting to dramatize an almost perfect documentary is certainly admirable, but this version of Grey Gardens just made me want to watch the original over and over again.

If you are a fan of the Maysles’ documentary, you already know the story here. The documentary presents snippets of Big Edie and Little Edie Beale (Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore in the Grey Gardens film), two cousins of Jackie Kennedy Onassis who lived in a rotting mansion in East Hampton for the latter part of both of their lives. The two were certainly eccentric, and the documentary is both humorous and tragic. This Grey Gardens adaptation attempts to show the Beales’ backstory, allowing the audience to see what caused their downfall from bourgeoisie society to squalor.

This reveal, while interesting, is also the film’s downfall. For those who have seen the original before, the information provided is interesting but also kills, somewhat, the sheer weirdness of the original. Watching this Grey Gardens gives us almost too much information about the Beales and, as a result, they become less mysterious and quirky than before. Zapping this film of its utter strangeness is a cardinal sin for me, so I found this to be a bit unforgivable. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh.

Fortunately, the performances on the part of Lange and Barrymore are superb. Barrymore, especially, looks exactly like Little Edie and, despite her and Lange’s faltering accents, they are almost exactly like the real Beales. Their performances only seriously falter when lines from the documentary are awkwardly fed into the script, creating gratingly uneven patches of dialogue. However, the two actresses work well with what they are given, and it’s clear that both didn’t view this as yet another TV movie opportunity.

The film, unfortunately, ends on a somewhat sour and sappy note with the premiere of the Maysles’ documentary. What could have been a very touching conclusion to the story of the Beales instead comes off as a bit cloying and manipulative, and for the sake of not spoiling anything, I will leave it at that. Fortunately, there is a nice wrap-up and dedication during the end credits, which provides yet more information that was not included by the Maysles originally.

Looking back on this film, I honestly don’t quite know if I liked it or completely despised it. There’s a large amount in this film to hate, but it’s so honest in its intentions that, at the same time, I can’t blame it for attempting to adapt a seemingly unadaptable documentary into a narrative feature. However, from this, it is clear that Grey Gardens simply does not work as a successful narrative work. The mundane day-to-day of the Beales does not a fictional screenplay make, and this experiment of sorts sadly validates this statement. Nevertheless, the end result that will be premiering on HBO April 18th could have been vastly worse, and the honest effort put into the creation of this film makes it worth viewing at least once. Just remember: if you’re going in expecting the original, you will be sorely disappointed.