December 13th, 2007 |
Southern draw
Meg Hewings
 |
 For the love of Jesus |
They say you can never understand the intense draw of the American South without being native to it. So after her beloved mother passed on, Laura Mitchell, an expat American living in Canada, goes on a personal journey back home to visit her expansive southern clan in Unbuckling My Bible Belt. Her mother was an inspiration to leftie Mitchell - a rare progressive Democrat amidst a mostly right-wing extended family. While Mitchell shares a deep respect for the South, she also fears her mother's ideals of justice and compassion are being swept away by the might of the Christian right.
Bearing gifts of Canadian maple syrup, Mitchell and her Montreal filmmaking friend Patricia Tassinari (award-winning director of Broken Promises) go on a road trip to trace Mitchell's family tree. Zigzagging across the Bible Belt, the pair drop in on aunts, uncles and cousins - and get an earful of insight. As they go, Tassinari captures with her camera the endless destitute towns, ramshackle houses and churches that dot the sprawling and sweltering rural landscape of the South.
Mitchell and Tassinari are welcomed with the warmth and hospitality that only close-knit family can offer. They engage with Mitchell's often wacky and opinionated southern kin: Christian militants in Atlanta, a Missouri pastor obsessed with the Rapture (the moment when Jesus will descend from Heaven and all the Christians alive on the earth will be simultaneously teleported up to meet the Lord), quasi-left-leaning Texan cowboys and an ex-fundamentalist turned drag queen. Their candid and frank discussions run the gamut; no topic is taboo as they discuss political beliefs, religious verve, the end of the world... even sex.
Mitchell doesn't lay off hot-button issues either, delving into the specifics of the war in Iraq and asking family members how they'd vote in the next election. She visits everyone from Bush-loving rancher relatives in their swank mansion to über-Christian suburban cousins to family members living in abject poverty in trailer parks, providing an insider's view of one southern family's very complex relationships with God, class, politics and each other.
The film won't likely change your bias that the South is on occasion a very scary place - indeed, it doesn't shy away from the realities of that special Bible Belt bond between poverty, racism and religious fundamentalism. But it refuses simple, reductionist claims about southern right-wing Bush-loving rednecks too. Mitchell and Tassinari welcome a wealth of opinions on everything from God to politics, and they do so with a deep respect for the southern comforts of booze, love and family. The journey turns out to be an enlightening and poignant one, a portrait of the South that beguiles.
Unbuckling My Bible Belt