Junebug
by Phil Morrison
List Price:
Our Price: $4.77
You Save: $10.22 (68%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.57 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alessandro Nivola, Amy Adams, Ben McKenzie, Embeth Davidtz, Scott WilsonDirector: Phil Morrison
Brand: ADAMS,AMY
Producer: Mike S. Ryan
Producer: Mindy Goldberg
Writer: Angus MacLachlan
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.78:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-01-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Junebug
Movie Review: So real and so full of symbolism
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is full of symbolism. Had the director's name been Igmar Bergman, it would have won prizes!
Having grown up near the location of this movie, it caused me pain and embarrassment. It captured life that I knew as a child and to some extent today perfectly. I knew many of those characters. The realism was in the characters, the homes, and the landscapes down to the red clay soil. The house that the autistic painter lived in reminded me of my great grandmother's house and the houses of some of my grand-aunts. It caused me pain because of the realism. It caused me embarrassment because that's from when I came and it's not too pretty.
The realism included the attitudes, too. There are certain things Southerners feel and communicate in a subtle way. For example, they always feel that outsiders think themselves are better than Southerners. It's probably some deep seated inferiority complex. Southerners are not prone to boasting so it was no surprise when Madeleine learned that George could sing. The hymn, too, was "symbolic" all about coming home and sins being forgiven.
The motif of family also pained me because I struggle within myself about having left my Southern "family." The value of family was implied more than stated -- except for when George told Madeleine that "family matters". The fact that Ashley was having a baby and then lost it is also like Southerners (and maybe the whole world, I don't know) will try to solve family problems with more family. All the family was isolated and lonely and yet so close (the same house). Ashley comes across as a silly ignorant girl but a few times she revealed why she was talking so much. In the kitchen when George and Madeline just arrived and Peg, Johnny, Ashley, and Madeline are around the table getting to know each other, there was an incident where Ashley interrupted with a silly question to protect Madeline from having to answer Peg's question.
The South I grew up in had this uneasy relationship between religion and sex. That theme came out in the movie, too. There was Johnny's misinterpretation of Madeline trying to help him, there was the art from Mr. Walk, there was Peg concluding things about Madeline staying up late at night to help Johnny, and there were the looks in the church, oh and the nightly sex in only one bedroom -- George and Madeline's. They were the ones that had "escaped."
Escape is another theme. It came out in Huck Finn - the book Johnny was (supposed to be) reading. Instead he choose to read the Cliff notes. He said it was "too long." Madeline first asked if he thought it was funny. It wasn't funny to him because he wanted to escape but couldn't. It was depressing to him. However, he did escape at work. There he had an honest "family" without the blood bond obligations.
Ashley also wanted to escape: go to college, go to the mall, etc.
Mr. Walk (notice the name -- symbolic, he'd '"walked" out of the quagmire through his autism and art) always painted pictures of the three things that shape Southern thought the most: slavery, the Civil war, and sex (Robert E. Lee's penis wrapped around to the back of the painting (symbolic of "hiding" sex)). I don't recall the details but each painting I saw rang a bell with some theme in Southern psyche and/or the dysfunctional Southern family. He put faces on the characters - face of people that stuck in his mind. It struck me that had the movie not gone by so fast that probably those characters had something in common -- the face and the painter character, that is. George was on one of the revolting slaves. Perhaps George had been a slave to the family but had revolted and moved away.
Mr. Walk in some ways was like one of Shakespeare's court jesters, stating the oblivious (although Ashley might fit this role, too, at times at least). His recitation at the table after Ashley said the prayer was fantastic. As I write this I don't recall it but I recall thinking it parallel to the family situation even though it was about a Civil War battle.
Then there were the birds, one of which Madeline broke when she first arrived. Birds can fly. Members of the family wanted to fly away but that family bond kept them there.
The Dad (don't recall his name) choose to escape a different way. He went down in the basement. He retreated there anytime he couldn't deal with family things like Johnny's obnoxiousness or George & Madeline kissing in the car when they first arrived. He choose to communicate with things -- he carved a bird for Peg (I assume to replace the broken one).
In fact, all the Southerners created things: Peg made Ashley's maternity dresses, the Dad did woodworking, Johnny worked on cars. (Ok, maybe Ashley didn't).
Art is also an important motif. Madeline was an art dealer specializing in self-taught artists. That self-taught part strikes a chord with me because Southerners are too proud to be "taught." This was especially true of Johnny who was reluctantly getting his GED. Ashley mentioned that she'd like to go to College but as she mentioned, she had no family, so maybe that exempts her from the family issues.
It's this whole thing about family creating these overbearing emotional problems and the way the escape is art (painting, woodworking, etc.) Church is also a form of escape.
The themes were supported at every turn. Recall the preachers prayer. He spoke of evil at the door and it not coming in. Yet, in the family, the evil was the extreme family bond.
Recall also that Peg was shown crying several times. Why? Was she lonely or was she weeping because the family was so dysfunctional? Or because she's to old and trapped to escape. Or all of the above. The Dad said she was hard on the outside but soft on the inside. I guess so.
Cigarettes. That is the biggest social problem in the South. Another form of escape? Yet when the escapees (George and Madeline) came down to the South, they also started to smoke - something they hadn't needed to do in Chicago.
Last thing. In the South (I used to do this as a kid), we'd catch Junebugs , tie a string to their hind leg and let them fly in circles for hours. These Junebugs were big, not like those I've occasionally seen in eleewhere. Is it foretelling that the new child would orbit the family, never able to escape the bond of family? Unless, of course it wriggled away or more likely it was released. In the hospital Ashley had the maturity to release George (and Madeline kinda sorta).
Summary of Junebug
When George introduces his savvy art dealer wife to his middle-class family in North Carolina, family dynamics are exposed and anxieties begin to surface.Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 3-APR-2007
Media Type: DVD
Similar DVD Movies
An EducationSony; Release date: 2010-03-30; Published: 2010-03-01; DVD
Best price: $3.77
Price in other shops:
The Jane Austen Book ClubSONY PICTURES HOME ENT; Release date: 2008-02-05; DVD
Best price: $5.71
Price in other shops:
In the BedroomBuena Vista Home Video; Release date: 2002-08-13; DVD
Best price: $2.31
Price in other shops:
The Squid and the Whale (Special Edition)Sony; Release date: 2006-03-21; Published: 2006-03-01; DVD
Best price: $0.29
Price in other shops:
You Can Count on MeBRODERICK,MATTHEW; Release date: 2001-06-26; Published: 2001-06-01; DVD
Best price: $4.30
Price in other shops:
Little ChildrenNEW Line Home Video; Release date: 2007-05-01; Published: 2007-05-01; DVD
Best price: $3.97
Price in other shops:
Rachel Getting MarriedSONY PICTURES HOME ENT; Release date: 2009-03-10; Published: 2009-03-01; DVD
Best price: $3.39
Price in other shops:
In AmericaMORTON,SAMANTHA; Release date: 2004-05-11; DVD
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
Sunshine CleaningFox; Release date: 2009-08-25; DVD
Best price: $1.99
Price in other shops:
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (Widescreen & Full Screen Edition)Universal Studios; Release date: 2008-08-19; DVD
Best price: $1.58
Price in other shops: