The Order of Myths subtly probes a city’s racial divide
The film that was called ‘the documentary that left the strongest impression from Sundance” comes to the Bijou this Friday as part of the Arts & Education Council’s Independent Film Series.
As winter turns to spring, Mobile buzzes and flutters with the floats, parades, masquerade balls, and secret mystic societies of Mardi Gras. In Mobile, this time-honored ritual has always been racially segregated and continues to be so today.
The film’s materials describe it this way: “Taking a wonderfully restrained, observational approach that allows viewers to draw their own conclusions, Brown unveils the vibrant pageantry under way as ornate masks are donned, luminous gowns fitted, bejeweled trains painstakingly stitched, and the king and queen of each royal court trotted out at public appearances, parties, and coronations—within their distinct black and white realms, that is.
“Playfulness, reverence, and camaraderie suffuse the spectacles, generating genuine mirth and dignity in each community. Yet stories of a lynching as recent as 1981, and of the white Mardi Gras queen’s slave-trading ancestors, as well as subtle interracial social codes, cast a shadow on the proud Mobile heritage the white residents invoke. Do the recent formation of a racially integrated secret society and the attendance by this past year’s black Mardi Gras monarchs at the white folks’ ball augur cracks in a mysteriously enduring social order?”
In one of the film’s segments, a debutante with self-described non-conservative views holds a long conversation with a black kitchen worker, in the kitchen, as other workers have to maneuver around her. In others, the camera pans along the well-kept houses of the wealthy, then contrasts the worn houses of the working poor—but without inserting voiceover commentary, allowing the images to speak for themselves.
Brown made her directorial debut with Be Here to Love Me: A Film about Townes Van Zandt, which was released theatrically worldwide. She produced Six Miles of Eight Feet, which won a Student Academy Award in 2000, and was the cinematographer for Ice Fishing, which received an honorable mention for short filmmaking at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.
With The Order of Myths, however, she’s taken a huge step forward and joined the ranks of major American documentary filmmakers.
As Manohla Dargis of the New York Times said in her review, “In contrast to the cloistered, all-white Mardi Gras membership group (called a mystic society) that gives the movie its poetic and freighted title, Ms. Brown has a beautiful grasp of gray.”
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