Salina Art Center

Hal Holbrook is more than an actor: he’s an American icon.  His flowing grey hair, raspy voice, steely gaze, slightly pugnacious jaw, determined brow, and never-say-die perseverance seem to embody bedrock American values.  Mr. Holbrook’s countenance wouldn’t look out of place on Mt. Rushmore; in fact, one of his most enduring roles is that of Abraham Lincoln.  Over a career spanning more that 50 years, on stage and television and movie screens, Holbrook has played a variety of elder statesmen, historical figures, attorneys, military officers, and literary personages.  He was the voice of “Deep Throat” in All the President’s Men and Emmy-nominated as The Stage Manager in Our Town; he has played John Adams and co-starred with Burt Reynolds in the television series Evening Shade.  But his most famous role is Mark Twain, which Holbrook developed in 1959 as the centerpiece of an acclaimed one man stage show that earned the actor his first Emmy nomination when it was televised in 1967.  Holbrook had a cinematic resurgence with his Oscar-nominated performance in Into the Wild, and in That Evening Sun, he absolutely dominates the film.  The part of Abner Meecham, the most crotchety of crotchety old men, is one that could have easily lapsed into parody without an actor of sufficient gravitas, humanity, and wisdom.  No actor could have replaced Holbrook in the role of Meecham, an octogenarian Tennessee farmer who walks out of an assisted care facility and returns to his farmhouse, only to discover that his son now rents it out to a family of what Meecham considers “white trash”: no-good patriarch Lonzo Choat (Ray McKinnon), his wife Ludie (Carrie Preston), and teenage daughter Pamela (Mia Wasikowska).  Appalled at being displaced by these lazy, worthless youngsters now living in his cherished home, Meecham moves into a nearby cabin (which used to be the slave quarters of the ancestral property) and wages a battle of nerves with the alcoholic, abusive Lonzo to see who ultimately gets to rule the roost.  As the war escalates, it becomes both comic and frightening.  This is a story (based on William Gay’s “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down”) that could have been turned into either Southern Gothic horror or pure slapstick silliness.  But first-time director Scott Teems, who also wrote the screenplay, keeps the narrative within the realm of the believable, heightening the tension and providing greater depth and meaning.  Obviously, the Choat clan represents the “new South,” which has driven out the older, conservative values of its elders; Abner Meecham represents the last gasp of a dying order that clings to the importance of hard work, plain talking, and standing on one’s own two feet, refusing help from anyone.  Gradually, however, we begin to suspect that not all of Abner’s values ought to survive; and his stubbornness doesn’t necessarily mean he’s more deserving of this small patch of land than the family he looks down upon.  We get a fuller picture of Abner in terrific scenes between him and his lawyer son, Paul (Walter Goggins); elderly, more pragmatic neighbor Thurl Chessor (Barry Corbin); and (in flashbacks) his late wife Ellen (played by Holbrook’s real-life spouse, Dixie Carter).  We admire Abner’s toughness and resolve, but his character has a darker side, and Holbrook’s too honest an actor to hide it.  That honesty has been a hallmark of Holbrook’s career: he’s played a museum’s worth of historical and famous fictional characters, but never as empty waxworks: even his Abraham Lincoln—perhaps the closest thing to an American saint this country has ever produced—becomes a three-dimensional human being, with both strengths and weaknesses.  Holbrook the actor is “ornery,” but in a good way: his tough-minded, straight-talking approach doesn’t beg for audience sympathy; it only demands respect.  And gets it.  At the age of 84, Holbrook is at the top of his game in That Evening Sun, playing a complex “hero” that novelist William Faulkner might have created.  The direction is leisurely paced but always absorbing, as the battle between Squatter and Carpetbaggers reaches its climax, but the film is totally Holbrook’s showcase—and he delivers one of the greatest performances of the year.