Mighty Fine (Debbie Goodstein, 2012): USA

Reviewed by Andrea Uttenthal. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Director Debbie Goldstein’s film Mighty Fine is about a family who moves from Brooklyn to New Orleans in search of a better life in the 1970’s. They must deal with the new city under the domineering eye of the father, played by Chazz Palminteri. Other cast members are Andie MacDowell, who plays the mother, and upcoming actress Rainey Qualley, MacDowell’s own daughter, and Jodelle Ferland in the roles of the two daughters.

In the opening scene we follow the little family driving towards New Orleans. You get a glimpse of tension as the olderst daughter, Maddie, refuses to participate in a word-game with her family. She isn’t happy about her parents decision to leave their home in Brooklyn. The youngest daughter is easily impressed, especially over the mansion of a home, their father Joe has bought for them. Joe’s devotion to his family knows no bounds. He just wants everyone to be happy, and he seeks to provide them with the ultimate things in a good life ranging from the palatial home to a steady string of extravagant gifts and taking them to fancy events. Unfortunately, Joe’s business is tilting on the brink of collapse, which is a fact he refuses to accept. He is dealing with the demise of American textile industry in the 1970s and he isn’t going to give up without a fight. When he should cut back on his generous spree, he instead seeks for a loan to keep his family out of suspicion.

The focus in this film is put on the father-daughter relationship as well as the theme of emotional abuse as distinctly different and likely much more prevalent than physical abuse.
Joe Fine is a complicated father who is marked by the domestic struggles that his personality flaws create. Essentially he is a loving father, but he is somehow tormented by his own haunted past. Throughout the film he never physically harms his family in any way, but his rage is an intermittent terrorizing force especially in the lives of his two daughters, Maddie and Nathalie. This force informs their choices, shaping and often even hindering their lives, which eventually gets too much for the family to live with. Stella, the mother, has a hard time accepting that her husband isn’t behaving how he should and that he is only causing trouble to their lives. It’s all about male rage and it’s effect on, in this case, the daughters.

The largest part of Joe’s fury is directed at Maddie, 16, who is beginning to show signs of an emerging sexuality and a willingness to challenge his authorities. His wife Stella, who is a holocaust survivor and therefore no stranger to victimization, is paralyzed by the whole conflict between safeguarding her daughters and supporting her husband. The youngest daughter Nathalie appears to be more forgiving of her fathers attacks, when actually her father’s anger makes her painfully shy and impede her dreams of becoming a poet.

Mighty Fine is told from the perspective of the youngest daughter Nathalie as an adult remembering the events of her youth, and it’s actually inspired by Director Debbie Goodstein’s own memories of her father and other troubled men.

I think this film paints a great picture on the fears and confusion that caused men of the same generation as Joe Fine to act out in destructive ways that they didn’t even understand themselves. I felt kind of scared whenever the father busts out in one of his paroxysms of rage, because you didn’t know how far he would go, and he kept getting more violent in he way he handled the different situations. One time he even threatened Maddie’s friends with a loaded rifle telling them to leave his home immediately!

I recommend people to go watch this film. It will bring you back to the 70’s and you will experience how an emotional powder keg, Joe Fine, is ready to explode at any instant holding his wife and daughters captive to his unpredictable mood swings.