Southern Discomfort

This film is based on Carson McCullers' novel of the same title. But if you missed the credit, you would probably never guess this story originated with the same author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and A member of the Wedding, two of McCullers' other works brought to the screen. Those films revolve around very sympathetic characters, whereas Reflections in a Golden Eye is populated solely with neurotics, psychotics and self-centered bores.

The film begins with a quote from the novel:

There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder took place.

Elizabeth Taylor stars as Leonora, a simple-minded sensualist who is carrying on an affair with Morris (Brian Keith), a colleague of her husband. Marlon Brando provides an excellent performance as Leonora's profoundly repressed husband, Weldon. Weldon and Morris are both U. S. Army officers living with their wives in neatly trimmed military houses. Morris's wife Allison (Julie Harris) suffered some sort of breakdown a few years before when she lost a baby. She now lives a secluded existence with a faithful, and truly bizarre, Filipino servant who acts on her every whim. Meanwhile, the young private who tends to Leonora's stallion is indulging in a variety of fetishes. It's as if McCullers wanted to put all the totally unredeemable characters of her imagination into one book.

Needless to say, this is not a film where you are likely to guess the ending ten minutes into it (or even sixty minutes into it). This film seems to be less concerned with a story than the individuals who populate it. Each of the characterizations is both revealing and believable. Their psychological problems are not merely window dressing for a conventional plot (in the manner of David Lynch, et. al.), but sincere explorations of the darker side of human nature.

Both the performances and the direction of this film show Hollywood at its best. But it is McCullers' depictions of troubled individuals that make this film unique.

-- Robert Stewart