Leigh delivers brilliant peformance in dark `Georgia'
Not so for Georgia . This film is about two sisters, both singers, with vastly different proportions of talent, passion and desire. There's no Bruce Willis, no irrelevant "love interest" and no plot elements or nude scenes calculated to draw a demographic. Georgia tells a story simply, profoundly and with great beauty.
Sadie (an astounding Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Georgia (Mare Winningham) are the sisters. Georgia is tremendously successful with a quiet rural home, husband and family; but Sadie, without her sister's powerful voice, bounces from one bar band to another, drinking her way in and out of various stages of squalor.
When Sadie gets a regular gig with a hard-working and financially solvent band, it seems she finally has a chance for some semblance of a normal life. But Sadie, as always, can't stand the regularity of such a life.
A longtime alcoholic, Sadie lives a borrowed rock 'n' roll life; she quotes her favorite songwriters freely, though she doesn't write herself. Meanwhile, Sadie reveres her sister and cheers her success louder than anyone.
When she hits bottom, Sadie always returns to the house where she and Georgia grew up, in which Georgia and her family now live. There's a pathetic quality in Georgia's view of her poor sister, whom she simultaneously protects and admonishes.
In a film like Georgia , more important than anything else are the screenplay and the performances. Fortunately, both script and acting are in top form.
Jennifer Jason Leigh confirms herself as the best actress in movies today, bringing to Sadie's unoriginal personality a humanizing vitality and a profound grace. She explores more than the `alcoholic character' usually allows and possesses every scene. In a time when strong female roles are few and far between, Leigh nails this one.
Also impressive are Winningham as Georgia, Ted Levine (most famous as the killer in The Silence of the Lambs ) as Georgia's husband, John Doe (a genuine rocker himself with a band called X) as the leader of one of Sadie's many bands, Max Perlich as Sadie's devoted husband and John C. Reilly as a sympathetic junkie who Sadie befriends.
In a film about musicians, the music is often disappointing, with dumb-looking concerts and obvious lip-sync. Director Ulu Grosbard daringly shot all the musical sequences live, and they end up as the most powerful moments in the film. Winningham is a highly talented singer, and Leigh's performance is startling. The climax is Sadie's wrenching eight-minute performance of Van Morrison's "Take Me Back."
Screenwriter Barbara Turner, primarily a writer of TV movies, also worked with her daughter (Leigh) as co-producer. They chose the music which is performed or heard very carefully, paying careful attention to the characters involved.
This is a film which involves the audience so much with the characters that we feel what they feel on-screen. When Sadie deals with her father or screams out a song, we feel her pain or joy. The screen, the theater and the other patrons melt away, and we can only cry as we see someone we genuinely care about flounder through life. Surely this is the zenith of cinematic experience.
If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has any integrity whatsoever, Jennifer Jason Leigh will be awarded the Oscar for Best Actress, and this film will receive multiple Oscar nominations. But don't count on it. A movie this brutally honest and taxing may incur the rath of the stalwart institution which specializes in rewarding bland paint-by-numbers flicks.
Don't trust the Academy to do the right thing; see Georgia now, while you have the chance. It will be released in Houston this January.
This item appeared in the Opinion section of the December 8, 1995 issue.
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