Grey Gardens (1976)

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Not the people who star in this wanton documentary, oh no. They have souls and they pine for their pasts and they regret profoundly, the way that we all do. They simply have the misfortune of having their innermost regrets and thoughts splayed out comically for all the world to see.I felt for these women so acutely. They love each other and fit together like a favorite pair of well worn shoes, but their devotion to each other seems to have robbed them of the vibrancy that they used to posses. They bicker and poke at each other because it's all they have left of the joys of life, a life that was more than enough for the both of them until these movie makers decided to bring up 'what ifs' and 'could have beens' from the past. It just seemed so cruel to put them through it. It was also unkind the way that they present the house as a dump when, from where I'm sitting, it looks like a perfectly comfortable and homey place to live. Just because these women don't adhere to the standard of the one percent doesn't make their home--full of warmth and genuine affection, a squalor shack. I cannot get behind this famed documentary because it cruelly dramatizes the wasted hopes and past dreams of a mother and daughter who lived, by any standards, a full life. Cruelty should not be regarded as art.

The documentary Grey Gardens, directed by the Maysles brothers was a groundbreaking installment of the cinema verite film movement. Edith and Edie Beale were eccentric people, and the Maysles took advantage of that with them being the subjects of Grey Gardens. There is no topic or lesson to be taught to the audience, rather it is like a peek into the daily life of of two co-dependent, sheltered women inside their dirty, dilapidated mansion.The heart of the film is the toxic relationship between a mother and daughter. Edie constantly confides to the camera that she "can't take another winter here in the country" and yet doesn't leave, and hasn't for twenty-five years. Her mother said "You can't have freedom when you are being supported", which resonated as a driving factor for why Edie is trapped in her forlorn life. Edie is stuck in the past, and obsessed with being famous and beautiful. She revels in the camera's attention, as if she finally got her big break that she gave up years ago to care for her mother. Their bickering and backwards conversations flanked by piles of filth and feral animals is sickening, but a depressingly true reality for these women obsessed with what could have been.

"Grey Gardens" is a riveting documentary about a mother and daughter who live in their deteriorating home, having little contact with others.This is a documentary in the true sense of the word, where the filmmaker does little more than document, without intent to impose a point of view. The camera merely follows the pair of women through their daily routines. On the other hand, it is impossible for the filming to not influence the behavior of the subjects, especially with Edith and Edie, who seemingly love to perform for the camera, and who enjoy having the crew around--probably because they offer a welcome interruption to their relative loneliness.The women live with a multitude of cats. They even feed the raccoons that have breached the interior walls of the rotting mansion. Mother and daughter interact with each other as if the daughter, Edie, was a young girl. They might bicker sometimes, but each is the other's link to the past, a shared history, memories of better days.The result is reminiscent of Miss Havisham from "Great Expectations", living as much in the past as the present.

Little Edie and Big Edie are characters that anyone can feel compassion for. Even though their house was filthy, this is somehow understandable considering their mental illness. On the message board a poster wrote that "Little Edie has the coping skills of an eight year old." This reminded me of when in the dramatized 2009 version, Big Edie says to Little Edie, "If you're stuck, it's only with yourself!" These women had everything; beauty, talent, intelligence, firm belief in their opinions and actions. Perhaps if Little Edie wasn't so hard on herself the first time things didn't work out, losing her hair, her job, and the love of her life, she would have made it. This somehow ties into what I believe is her mental illness: her inability to pick herself up when times are hard and see that good times lie ahead. The world will never know what have happened if she didn't listen to her mom's plea, "Come home, Edie! Let me take care of you!"Yet these understandably insecure women somehow manage to be brilliant, heartbreaking, and lovable, even in their extremely filthy home. These women were extraordinary, and their interaction with each other bring humor and sadness. When Edie had one of her emotional breakdowns, dwelling about what could have been, or about how she wants to get out of her home because she feels like a little girl, one gets the intense urge to hug her and tell her that "everything will be okay!" Great documentary!!9/10