Ode to Billy Joe (1976)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) I can sort-of-see how Ode to Billy Joe has aged in interesting ways. At the time, the film was well-known to have been based on a song describing a suicide, and also for coming up with a reason to explain the suicide. That reason, a young man unable to accept his homosexuality in 1950s small-town Mississippi, would have been shocking at the time. Today, of course, it plays differently: as a mournful southern-US gothic showing how social strictures doomed a bright young man. (Not that the film is necessarily less mournful by itself, but there’s a sense that the young man is a mere accessory to illustrate the growth of the female lead, the chief piece of evidence being that his suicide occurs midway through the film.)  But for all of that improvement in effect, and the film’s rising status in queer-cinema studies, Ode to Billy Joe remains a chore to get through. I’m not overly sympathetic to small-town nostalgic dramas in the first place, and this one seems more unbearable than most—get me out of here! is my overriding reaction to the thought of spending any more time in dead-end rural Mississippi. It’s easy to empathize with the female lead once she becomes determined to get out of town. I suppose that the film will appeal to a certain audience, but it’s really not in my wheelhouse by any measure—not by theme, not by tone, not by genre. But I can respect the intention, and I’m dead-certain that Ode to Billy Joe is better appreciated now, even by a small number of cinephiles, than it was back then by general audiences.