STN Entertainment
Not Such A Saint
'Ghosts of Mississippi'
PHOTOS BY ELI REED
Evita production leaves out
Peronist violence against Argentine Jews.
LYNNE MEREDITH COHN STAFF WRITER
fl e Eva Peron
has been idol-
ized and
turned into a
pop icon since her
death, in life she was
party to a not-so-nice
regime. Both the An-
drew Lloyd Webber
. musical and Madon-
na's movie fail to men-
- tion the extensive
discrimination enact-
ed by the Peron cam-
paign, especially to
Jews.
In fact, of the two
biographies available
at local bookstores
Evita, First Lady by
John Barnes (Grove
Press Books) and Evi
f Eva Duarte de
ta, The Real Life of
Eva Peron by Nicholas
while Jews were knocked to the
Fraser & Mama Navarro ground and kicked. When the
(W.W. Norton & Co.) — scant police did act, it was usually to
space is devoted to this topic. arrest the victims."
The latter does not even men-
As Barnes says, "Certainly
tion Peronist anti-Semitism.
the attacks on the country's
Apparently, Evita has been Jewish population could not
canonized not only by Argenti- have happened without, Peron's
na.
tacit approval. As the country's
During World War rr, future Strongman, he could put a stop
Argentine President Juan to it at any time."
Domingo Peron's admiration for
By the close of 1945, he did,
the Axis powers, especially
ugh. znes ppeculates as
Italy's fascist dictator, Mussoli-
. -r4sq.z4ng 'Perhaps
,, ni, was no secret,
on him that
Mr. Fraser and Ms. Navarro.
ro.
n 4pger of
Nor was Eva Peron's support of
Wilittanal
her husband.
It is revealed in Mr. Barnes'
ub cl con-
tome that during at least 10
weeks of Per ;'s carctpaign in
not ex-
late 1945; the frantiO bittale '
to vio-
"Pay-ronl Pay-rain!" instilled f ear
ence against his o political
in the Jews of Buenos Aires:
opponents.
"The city's Jews — 400,000
Barnes writes that in Janu-
of them, the largest Jewish corn
ary 1946, clouds of tear gas
munity in South America -- filled the streets of Buenos
were one of their fa igl
Aires, ostensibly to 1Dreak up
gets, news which V
g te chills
sent
tar - battles between warring fa.c-
around a world still digesting tion.s in which Peron's oppo-
the horrors of Buchenwald. Rill nents always came off second
a Jew and be a patriot,' was just best."
one of many anti-Semitic slo-
While Eva and Juan Peron
gans splashed in red
re paint on may have fought for Argentina's
the walls of the Jewish quarter working class, their sympathies
of the city.
laid with those individuals to
"After one pro-Peron demon- whom they could themselves re-
stration, crowds of young Pero- late. Others, like the country's
nistas invaded the quarter to Jews, remained outside the
loot Jewish-owned shops, bru- realm of their cause. And like
tally beating anyone who at- some of their compatriots, the
tempted to stop them. In scenes Perons were not strangers to
reminiscent of Nazi Germany ethnically-directed discrimina-
in the 1930s, police stood by tion and violence. Li
Wh
—
-
A portrait 0
Alec Baldwin and Whoopi Goldberg in Ghosts of Mississippi.
Rated PG-13
office in Mississippi's Hinds Coun-
ty. After initial reluctance, her re-
quest is granted and the matter
irector Rob Reiner begins is turned over to Assistant District
Ghosts of Mississippi with a Attorney Bobby DeLaughter (Alec
vivid sequence of historical Baldwin).
images, all of them commu-
For DeLaughter, the case be-
nicating the film's essential mes- comes an odyssey into the still
sage — the present is created by seething emotions of the deep
the past and when we fail to re- South. And to his chagrin, he dis-
solve the crimes of the past, we in- covers early on that it is not only
vite a repetition of all its
lack of evidence and testi-
evils.
mony that prevents him
MOVIES
In 1963, the civil rights
from moving forward, but
movement was gathering
a general lack of outrage.
steam throughout the south and The overt racism of the past has
nowhere was the steam hotter or been replaced by something more
deadlier than in Mississippi. On implacable — indifference. In one
June 12 of that year, Medgar especially telling scene, Evers' own
Evers, the NAACP's first field sec- brother (Bill Cobbs) tells De-
retary in that heavily segregated Laughter that few people —black
state, was shot and killed in the or white — remember his broth-
driveway of his home. His mur-
derer, a notorious racist named
Byron de la Beckwith (James
Woods), was released after two tri-
als when all-white juries failed to
render a verdict of either guilt or
innocence.
For nearly three decades the
case was left open, the chances of
a third trial diminishing with
every passing year. In 1989, en-
couraged by a newspaper's reve-
lation that jury tampering may
have aided de la Beckwith in es-
capingjustice, Evers' widow, Myr-
lie (Whoopi Goldberg) formally
requested that the case be re-
opened by the district attorney's
D
Robert del Valle leads Border's
Jewish Book Group and is a
former film reviewer for the
Metro Times.
James Woods as Byron de la Beckwith,
murderer of civil rights leader Medgar
Evers.
er or what he died for. On more
than one occasion, DeLaughter
finds his commitment to the case
called into question and shaken
by the very same individuals he
would normally expect support
from. Only the strength of a mo-
mentum that at times seems half-
mystical sustains him and
permits him to bring a killer to a
final reckoning with the truth.
Reiner's handling of this par-
ticular episode in our recent past
is balanced and sure. Like his con-
temporary Ron Howard, he has a
linear style without frills, but un-
like Howard he can use symbols
and metaphors without drawing
undue attention to them. The sub-
tle employ of a child's lullaby or
the sight of a washroom door that
still carries the brand of segrega-
tion — such symbols manage to
speak volumes in a concise and
clear manner.
Alec Baldwin and Whoopi Gold-
berg both deserve kudos for their
performances. Baldwin, thanks
chiefly to poor choices in scripts
(The Shadow) and the occasional
tabloid headline, is usually dis-
missed as a name rather than a
talent, but his understated deliv-
ery here is beyond complaint. It is
James Woods, however, who
stands out from start to finish. As
Byron de la Beckwith, he is a
strutting, posturing bucket of poi-
son, as unredeemable as the ha-
tred he espouses.
tO ci)
k s4
Q.b. .®4
— Robert del Valle