Eastwood wasn't a good choice as director

I think this was far and away Eastwood's best directorial effort. I haven't seen all the movies he's directed, but I've seen the ones that most would compare this one to. It seemed like an unusual choice for him, because it wasn't a Western, wasn't about violence or a male code of honor. It was actually about superstition. The plot moves gracefully, not by sudden changes. It has a very Southern pace. There's a subtle undercurrent of gentility and menace, characteristic of Southern cities, as well as mystery: Not everything was quite what it might seem, at first. It has ambiguities. I was surprised at how worldly it was about sexual difference, for instance. At the end of the movie, we're pretty much left to our own conclusions about what really happened, and what it really meant. How many movies are like that?

How would you have done it differently?

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I think Eastwood was a little too conservative to be a good director for this one, vis a vis inserting the romance plot and all that. I also find Eastwood tends to take things way to straight up dramatic, hit you over the head with it, in his movie, while this story needed a bit of a lighter touch and a lighter sensibility which the book had

I mostly agree that Clint's conservative posture didn't assist him in doing this material terribly well -- although I'm not sure that I agree it needed a lighter touch.

It's his worst work as a director, to be sure -- and all the more brutal a disappointment because of the promising subject matter and stature of the book.

I suspect Eastwood was itching to option the book in order to do a kind of vanity project showcasing his taste for jazz as well as Johnny Mercer's music. And while I certainly can commend that, ultimately the movie didn't work because Clint didn't really seem terribly engaged with the story or how to get the most out of its southern gothic potential.

It sooooo missed the mark that it's almost painful. Made almost worse because you can tell what the movie wants to be as it progresses, fumbling almost every scene as it moves along.

Even the title scene in the garden at midnight just lays there and dies.

SMH.


--
LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA

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