Crazy like a Fox

In Crazy like a Fox (2006) Nate Banks, 8th generation scion of a Virginia plantation family, faces the loss of his family home and estate. He's a quixotic and somewhat eccentric man who rides around his plantation declaiming Shakespeare (especially King Lear) and admiring his land and family heritage. He's deeply in debt, his home is on its third mortgage, and he's being forced to sell. The film is about how he resists giving up his home and quaintly and ineptly tries to get it back. Banks is played by Roger Rees, who puts his experience as a Shakespearean actor to good use in this film.

The film is a quiet comedy, usually not slapstick or burlesque. Nate has a wife and two children. His wife Amy (played by Mary McDonnell of Battlestar Galactica fame) is more down to earth than he is. She recognizes the pointlessness of trying to hold on to the house and land, and she presses her husband to sell. Though Nate is not a success as a farmer, and though he seems to have money and sunk more deeply into debt no matter what he tried to do, the film is entirely on his side. Land, family, and heritage trump everything.

There is something endearing about this awkward and amateurish film. Partly it is simply the awkwardness. The film exists in spite of itself, and one can only speculate as to who produced and underwrote it. The Virginia Film Office is listed in the credits, and the prominent use throughout the film of information about the pivotal role Virginia has played in the nation's history suggests the film may be something of a homegrown effort—how many times Nate happens to mention that George Washington was friends with his great grandfather several times removed I cannot count.

Certainly in its values the film is homegrown. There's little subtlety. Crazy like a Fox defines the qualities of Southern living as gentility, community, veneration of the past, and love of the land. The North and the rest of the world are corporate greed and mindless urbanism. The South is agriculture and tradition. The North is commerce, banks, lawyers, and real estate agents. Not surprisingly, a lawyer and a real estate agent--they're married--decide to buy Greenwood. Not surprisingly, the lawyer is named Will Sherman. He has no sympathy for the feckless Banks, and as soon as he and his wife succeed in talking Nate into selling the house (with the promise that he can continue to live on the property as the farm manager) they evict him. Their plan, ultimately, is to raze the 200-year-old house and subdivide the land for a high-class subdivision.

Although the Shermans give their word about allowing Banks to continue living at Greenwood, about not tearing down the house, the film makes a point of the fact that they give their word as a matter of honor—the promise is not written down and therefore has no legal force. To the Southern real estate agent and to Banks their word of honor is enough. To the Shermans it is nothing—as soon as the deed of sale is signed, they announce their intention to evict Banks. The point here is that Southerners are people of honor while Northerners are not. I'd guess that few if any business deals these days depend on a word of honor, rather than a signed and notarized contract.

Nate's reaction to what he regards as betrayal and deceit is extreme. He begins to behave as if he has lost his mind. He finds the Civil War sword that once belonged to his grandfather, puts on the Civil War uniform given to his grandfather by General Lee, and begins riding back and forth across his land, waving the sword, reciting Shakespeare and Chekov. Though his wife and children move into town, he remains at Greenwood, living in a cave on a river bank, biding his time and looking for a way to defeat the Shermans. There is a clear connection here between Nate and King Lear—the old King is betrayed by two of his daughters and loses his power as a result; he wanders mad on the moor. Nate is betrayed by corrupt Northerners and loses his land. One wonders whether this connection will lead to a tragic outcome for Nate, but the film subverts any tragic connotations with a soundtrack that suggests that Banks behavior is comic and clown like, that he is more akin to Shakespeare's Fool than Lear.

People like the Shermans certainly do exist, but in this film they're so stereotypically drawn, so shallow, that it's difficult to take them seriously—even though they have the power to raze the house and sell the land. They have a home in Palm Springs and spend much of their time there. When Mrs. Sherman talks to the servants of Greenwood (whom Nate treats like family) she addresses them while sitting in a chair, in a distant manner, gives orders, and dismisses them by ringing a bell. Will is bombastic and arrogant and willing to do whatever it takes to get his way. Mrs. Sherman often talks about how the house at Greenwood is beyond repair. Greenwood for the Shermans is nothing more or less than a financial investment. The film makes clear that tradition and the abstract, tenuous notion of "land" as anything other than a financial commodity mean nothing to him.

While the Shermans are away at Palm Springs, the black housekeeper Mary Johnson (Myrrh Cauthen) tells Nate he should move back into the house. She regards the house without question as Nate's house. She believes the Shermans are hoping the house will burn because they have removed the pennies from the fuse box that kept electricity flowing in the house. Nate gradually convinces his family to return to Greenwood. The idea here is that while the Shermans are away Nate will make sure that the house is properly maintained. Everyone gleefully acknowledges this fiction. Nate and Amy hold a Christmas party—the entire town seems to be there. They all understand that Nate is living illegally in the house, but they don't care—regardless of the fact that someone else owns the house, it belongs to Nate and his family.

If the Shermans represent the North, then how does this film construct the South? The South is embodied in Banks himself, the patriarch of his family estate. He loves his heritage and his land, which he and his ancestors have gradually had to sell off in parcels to pay debts. Nate talks frequently about the importance of land and of farming, but we see him do little more than admire his property. He rarely works it. Maybe he has employees who work the farm, but we see little of them. (He even suggests at one point that making money off the land isn't the point of owning it. He tells Sherman that he could make money by raising chickens, if he wanted to.) Around Nate are arrayed other Southerners, the townspeople of the small town nearby, the African Americans who work in his house and who are absolutely loyal to him, the white employees who work for him. Although she at first resists, his wife Amy soon comes over to his side. In this small Virginia community everyone agrees that Nate should keep his land and house regardless of the fact that he can't pay his debts. They ostentatiously decline to acknowledge the Shermans when they pass on the streets. A local restaurant refuses to serve the Shermans; the owner describes them as trash.

When Sherman seeks permission to divide Greenwood up into estates for a subdivision, the country calls a meeting and declines to give approval. In retaliation, Sherman hires a wrecking crew and begins to demolish the house. Nate rallies friends and families and they obstruct the wrecking crew. Nate has another party at the house attended by everyone in the area, including the judge whom Sherman approaches the next day in hopes of legal redress. The film suggests (or at least Will Sherman sees it this way) that everyone in the area is related and in cahoots. When the crowd gathers to support Nate in his resistance to the demolition of his home, his wife Amy suggests that they make a party of it: they go home and dress up in 19th-century garb and return to riding horses and sitting in carriages, as if the Civil War is being fought again.

Recognizing that they may become embroiled in a losing and long-term legal battle, the Shermans decide to sell the house and land and leave town. Nate and his family move back in, victorious. Their real estate agent tells them they can live there and take care of the place while he tries to sell it. The film ends. Some might consider the ending as less than satisfactory because although Nate is back on his land and in his house, they are still being sold out from under him. But perhaps the ending is supposed to imply that given enough time Nate and his friends may find a way to buy back the house.

Crazy like a Fox is like a pageant play. There is no real tension. One occasionally wonders whether Nate is truly going to lose his mind and run amuck or even whether he is going to be killed. But for the most part the characters go through their expected motions—the evil carpetbagger Shermans rapaciously planning to subdivide and sell the land; the good and virtuous Nate Banks and friends stalwartly refusing to surrender to the forces of capitalism and the North. It is as if all the film really wants to do is to make its point—that the values embodied in the South—as the film construes the South—are good and noble even though they are being devoured and reduced by the rest of the nation. The film's definition of the South is, of course, arbitrary and narrow, historically flawed, and politically retrograde. This is the South that the makers of the film want to believe in, not the South that actually exists. The film sees the South in terms of the noble landowners. Land is everything. Veneration of tradition and history matter above all else. If farmers don't make enough money to pay their debts, the fault isn't theirs but that of the corrupt modern system to which they are subject. Lower-class whites as well as African Americans respect the landowners and share their values. Southerners live by a code of honor, not of law—law for them is based on honor. The portrait of the South we have here is artificial and hollow and incomplete—even Margaret Mitchell and William Gilmore Simms gave fuller portraits. At least in their novels, written from a decidedly partisan Southern viewpoint, there was the sense of a three-dimensional society being portrayed. In Crazy like a Fox Nate Banks comes across mainly as a flat, shallow Don Quixote figure.

Crazy like a Fox takes itself seriously. It is earnest and well intentioned, even though it is clumsily made as a film and poorly conceived and executed as a narrative that seeks to make serious statements about the nation and its history. If the nation were dominated by men like Nate Banks, we'd all be in trouble.

Crazy like a Fox is reminiscent of the film Colonel Effingham's Raid (1946), based on the novel by Berry Fleming, in which a retired military officer leads the people of a small Georgia town in resistance against plans to tear down the county court house.