STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989) **** A film of sensitivity and grace. The all-time champion weepy. For once the Hollywood treatment of the subject matter pays off: the rendering of Natchitoches, Louisiana bourgeois society is rendered charmingly eccentric, endearingly human, by the very gaggle of characteristics that might drive normal people nuts in real life. It's a great Robert Harling script based on and demanding reality, and one of the great casts ever assembled. It's difficult to think of any film with such breadth and diversity to its cast, and all but impossible to think of any other film where it actually worked. The acting is so incredibly brilliant that it's actually a relief when Tinseltown rears its clichéd head through the soaring Georges Delerue theme, or Herbert Ross leaning back for one more aerial shot of a city without suburbs. For those who insist on knowing such things, Sally Field wins. Barely, because Tom Skerritt is the only flawless performance and Olympia Dukakis gets the best line (one of the truly great moments in cinematic history)...it's the textbook building up the existential gestaltenschaung to the unbearable and unbreakable. It's also a textbook case of getting excellent performances from unexpected sources through well considered casting: the script begs at Julia Roberts' feet for her moving and understandably hysterical reactions as a southern yuppie wife; Dolly Parton is the original holy mould of shamanistic hairdresser replete with mechanic husband; Dylan McDermott resembles nothing so much as a good frat boy getting older without putting much thought into it; but what genius realized Daryl Hannah could look so doofy in glasses, and so proto-Dollyesque as she comes to terms with herself? Then there are the geniuses at the corners: Sam Shepard and Shirley MacLaine and her dog. Keep the hankies close my friend, and start thinking of good excuses (hay fever, etc.) if your machismo demands it.
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