A Lodestone in a Shining Career
In the wake of the Civil War and the subsequent turn into the 20th century, the South became home to a sprawling literary tradition. With a tumultuous past firmly in view, writers such as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor penned brooding tales of warring clans and familial dysfunction, often punctuated with some of the most mind-boggling climaxes in literature. It is a tradition that continues to this day and one that has recently found its way off the page and onto the screen.
This week’s selection in the Arts and Education Council’s Independent Film Series is That Evening Sun, an unvarnished piece of Southern grit shot in the summer of 2008 in Knoxville and starring the great Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild) in a career-defining performance.
Based on William Gay’s short story “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down”, That Evening Sun is the tale of Abner Meecham, an aging Tennessee farmer spending his latter years in a desolate nursing facility. His dissatisfaction is written unmistakably in the furrow of his brow and it comes as no surprise when he more »













