Bo Mcguire directs a queer, southern love letter in “Socks on Fire”

Arts

Jun 23

Featured

On the northeastern side of Alabama sits the broad but lively city of Hokes Bluff. It may not be on your radar (yet), but I’ve come to know it as the centerpiece of Bo McGuire’s Socks on Fire -- a Southern, Queer tale tracking the filmmaker’s shifting family dynamics after the death of a matriarch. This experimental documentary film spells out a story of loss, and how others can shock you as they grapple with changing circumstances.

Throughout the film, there’s a heavy weight given to each member of McGuire’s family and how they relate to each other. You get a real sense of their dynamics, to the point that they almost begin to feel like a self-sufficient cell. The home itself becomes a protective membrane and losing Bo’s grandmother was like losing the nucleus.

As a narrator, McGuire puts in no effort to hide his role. Although we do hear from family and friends, a lot is curated through the lens of his own experiences. The picture will regularly divert from the overarching narrative to focus on a small shop owner, or a radio show that is only famous to the locals. Aside from the visual tone of this film, that openness to jump around is what makes the movie feel so alive. It felt like going home with a friend for the summer, but instead of hitting all the tourist traps on the town’s website, they show you the spots that really makes home home to them.

This pathology even carries into the characters we meet. In various ways, Socks on Fire blurs your understanding of reality and recreation; one particularly absorbing way of doing this was showing actors as both performers and documentary subjects themselves. Like the previously mentioned radio show. The host was introduced once as she appears in the narrative, but also as herself and her relation to the area. Another is the actor who plays Bo’s aunt in her older age. We meet them first in full Aunt Sharon drag, and later out of drag as themselves. This decision to pull back the curtain on screen added an element of lightness to what could have felt like a very heavy family docudrama.

The strongest characteristic of this offbeat film is how we are being shown these events. I can only transcribe it as somewhere between a western fairytale and an Investigation Discovery show if it was made by Logo. Beyonce, Memento, Boyhood, and Animal Kingdom; Socks on Fire finds a way to feel like a loving recreation of all of these. The choices made feel organic and poignant.

“I am just a person who wants to take the facts and rub glitter all over them until they sparkle into something else… glamour, if you will.”

The picture floats across timelines, blending many eras of Bo’s life. This restitching takes us from viewing incidents as chronological moments to emotional beats. Suddenly a character’s actions feel like the direct reaction to something that happened 20 years ago. With all of these elements, I never felt like I was doing work as an audience member. The simplicity of the narrative saves the film from becoming melodrama.

After both seeing the film and speaking to Bo, it’s obvious how much soul went into the making of Socks on Fire. It’s like a significantly less jarring Gummo; the kind of movie that you can tell is speaking to a very distinct American experience, even if you don’t register everything as such. I do feel that I understand Hokey Bluff. Definitely not where anything is and what it feels to physically be there. But the culture, the climate, the way it moves, and the way it’s stood still; all of those factors feel realized in my mind. And that is completely due to the uncompromising vision by Bo and crew; they really took a dreamy concept, and made it feel so very real.