The Great Santini: A Review

THE GREAT SANTINI

You can love and hate someone in equal measure. The Great Santini shows us a loving and flawed man whom you recoil at while also finding something of almost nobility within in. 

It is 1962. Vietnam is still just a name on a map. Segregation is still the law of the land. The closest that Marine Lieutenant General Wilbur P. "Bull" Meechum (Robert Duvall) will get to war is flying over the Spanish skies. He is a tough military man, boorish and treating his family like it was a military unit. He is, however, loyal to his wife Lillian (Blythe Danner) and their children. They have two boys and two girls. The oldest is Ben (Kevin O'Keefe), who is about to turn eighteen. His second oldest is Mary Anne (Lisa Jane Persky), who is as sarcastic and dramatic as Ben is not. 

Bull has received orders to go to a new military installation. As such, he gets everyone to drive out at 3 a.m. to Beauford, South Carolina. Bull has arranged for a nice antebellum home for his brood. He also expects everyone to follow his orders. That includes Arrabelle Smalls (Theresa Merritt), their new maid. "I am The Great Santini", he tells Arrabelle on their first meeting. She is more amused but puzzled by his behavior. Arrabelle has her own concerns, chief among them is her son Toomer (Stan Shaw). He lives alone in a remote shack and would be now called a special needs person.

Toomer and Ben become friends despite their different backgrounds. Bull is not prejudiced. He is, however, a bully to his children. Bull cannot admit that he lost a pickup basketball game to Ben, who mockingly calls himself "The Great Bentini". Lillian is supportive of both Bull and Ben. How long this can go on one does not know. Ben's basketball skills get him on the team. Bull's berating manner gets Ben off the team. Toomer faces his own danger from racist bully Red Pettus (David Keith), whom even whites don't like. Ben and Bull must make their own choices about what it is to be a man. For one, it means finally standing up for what he thinks is right. For the other, it means making a great personal sacrifice for his family, his community and his country.

The Great Santini can confuse people by the title. When Bull shouts "I am The Great Santini" to Arrabelle, she replies "I's Arrabelle Smalls, the new maid", then adds that she's never worked for Italians before. Meechum corrects her that they are all Scotch. Like Arrabelle, one might wonder how The Great Santini works when it comes to the Catholic Meechum family. I understand that "The Great Santini" is Meechum's flight name when piloting. It has nothing to do with circuses. 

I will walk that back a bit. The Great Santini is something of a circus, that circus being the Meechum family. The film is about the dynamics between Bull and both his families: the Marines and the blood. Robert Duvall received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his role of Bull Meechum. It is more than earned. Bull Meechum is boorish, tyrannical, and bigoted. "Hey Lillian, the little homo is sleeping naked", he shouts out when he storms through the house waking the children. He was not referring to Ben. He was referring to his tween son Matthew (Brian Andrews). 

Bull Meechum is arrogant, obnoxious, downright cruel at times. At both basketball games, Bull shocks the viewer by his actions. When he finally loses to Ben for the first time in his life, Bull is enraged. He threatens to knock the freckles off Mary Anne's face with the basketball. In a scene that has gone on to be parodied, he keeps bouncing the basketball off Ben's head while taunting him. In perhaps another actor's hands, Bull would have devolved into a stereotype of the crazed Marine. 

In Duvall's hands though, he allows Wilbur, not Bull or "the Great Santini" to emerge. We see the man behind the braggadocio and strict military manner. On Ben's eighteenth birthday, Bull storms into Ben's room. An annoyed Ben grows more annoyed when he opens his gift, which is an old military flight jacket of Bull's. However, in this scene, we listen to Bull talk about how he rushed to the hospital eighteen years that day to see Lillian and their new son. Duvall lets Bull's quiet, unspoken and unspeakable pride in his son creep out. Here, we get Bull show as much vulnerability as he can.

Duvall is not weepy. He is not blubbery. What he is rather, is quietly proud. He even allows some gentleness to creep out. Bull has pride in having a son. What he also has is pride in Ben, the person. It is in these little moments that we see why despite being mostly awful to everyone, the Meechum family does love Bull.

In another strong and powerful scene, Bull is found drunk in a Beauford park. He is rambling to himself. He will not admit that he is in shock. He is in shock that Ben has at last stood up to him. He is also probably in delayed shock about Toomer's fate. As Bull rambles, we see just how cut off he is. Bull is a Marine through and through. He is also Wilbur, shellshocked that Ben is no longer willing to be a child. He sees how his family has finally rebelled, down to Matthew beating on Bull's legs as Bull grows dangerously violent. In this tense moment, Bull looks down and around, perhaps realizing that he truly is out of control. That someone who prided himself on being in full control, that would be a shock. That he would hurt those he would protect would be more so.

It is a credit to Robert Duvall that we do not end up hating nor sympathizing with Bull Meechum. We also do not feel that he is untrue to how he is. There is no sudden turnaround, no great softening. He is still The Great Santini, but at least he is now a slightly more introspective one.

The Great Santini also won Michael O'Keefe a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his Ben Meechum. O'Keefe seems very close to being a lead performance. I can understand why he is considered Supporting as The Great Santini is not strictly about him. However, I think O'Keefe handles his scenes with Duvall extremely well. His best moments are always with Duvall. There is the aforementioned basketball scene. There is the scene when an enraged Bull comes upon Ben, who had gone against Bull's insistence to stay home rather than listen to Arrabelle's pleas to go to Toomer. 

A sobbing Ben goes up to his father, who promptly slaps his son. "You disobeyed a direct order, Hog! A direct order from your commanding officer!" Bull shouts (he calls his kids "hogs" or "sports fan"). We know what has happened, but Bull initially does not. It makes Ben's tears more impactful. He is not a Marine under Colonel Meechum's command. He is Ben, Wilbur's son, a son who is deeply traumatized by what he has seen. Once Bull sees exactly what has happened, his demeanor changes somewhat. In a softer but still sharp voice he asks Ben, "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say something?". In a mix of anger and sadness, Ben replies, "Nobody tells you anything, Dad". 

He does well with others too. His best non-Duvall scene is with Blythe Danner as the ever patient and Catholic Lillian. Ben is angrily observing Bull practicing basketball in the rain. Lillian comes in and tells Ben that his father is there, not to show that he can beat him at basketball but that he knows that he can't, not without work. She adds that Bull knows that Ben is watching. It is his way of showing Ben both love and respect. Both O'Keefe and Danner are quite effective here.

The scene unfortunately plays like a theatrical production in writer/director Lewis John Carlino's adaptation of Pat Conroy's novel. That would be a minor flaw. What is a more pressing problem is Stan Shaw's Toomer Smalls. Shaw, I think, did his best to play the love child of Forrest Gump and Bubba. Yes, The Great Santini was long before Forrest Gump came along. However, the mannerisms that Shaw gives Toomer: the stuttering, the halting manner, the deliberately blank eyes. To me, it looked too mannered, too determined to play-act than in being. His subplot, while needed, felt a bit off to things. 

It did not help that we never really heard how Toomer's fate affected Arrabelle. It is as if the film used them as plot devices rather than as people. 

Overall, The Great Santini gives us a fascinating portrait of a complex man. Bull is boorish as I've said. he is cruel, even abusive. Yet he is also someone people love and who does love his family. For anyone struggling with loving difficult parents, The Great Santini can show us not how to, but why such a thing is possible. 

DECISION: B+