#019 - grand isle (2019)
hello and welcome to my weblog. tonight i watched grand isle (2019).
i have read one (1) william faulkner novel; it was a long time ago and part of a series of increasingly elaborate attempts to impress someone i had a crush on. i hated the book though i don’t think i admitted it at the time. the thing about the south in southern gothic literature, and in wider popular culture for that matter, is it is not a place where people live; it is a setting for caricatures to act out ambiguous morality plays. it’s all cyprus and spanish moss, towering victorian homes showing their age, a performative hospitality that reads as sinister, typically unplaceable accents, sweet tea and juleps. when have you seen a movie set in the south which didn’t make a big deal about the fact that it was set in the south? in which the south itself wasn’t the main character.
this film, “grand isle”, was filmed in and set in grand isle, louisiana which as of 2020 had a population of 1005. grand isle, louisiana, has a wikipedia page that includes an “in popular culture” section which fails to mention this movie.