This is a prime example that no matter how intellectual a person is, he/she still has triggers as this encounter led to Buckley and Vidal’s lifelong clash. They genuinely despised each other, as evidenced by their debates, until both of them committed ad hominem when Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” while Buckley fired back and called Vidal “queer” and threatened to sock him in the face. Buckley Jr., a conservative, and Gore Vidal, a liberal, as they battle out their wits during the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. Previously a producer ( The Hunger Games), he infuses The Best of Enemies with a certain verbal panache that adds much to the movie’s sense of place, time, and history.‘Best of Enemies’ revolved around two highly intelligent yet complete polar opposites in ideologies William F. No spoilers here, but it’s worth noting that the Klan’s official motto, “Non silba sed anthar,” which translates to “Not self, but others,” begins to have more than just one meaning to the increasingly harried Ellis.īissell, who also scripted the film, proves to be a dab hand with dialogue, resulting in some powerhouse monologues on the subjects of race and class in Durham ’71. The Klan and the council assume that with their man Ellis on board they’re guaranteed to win out, but even strange bedfellows can end up engaging in some pretty heavy pillow talk.
Riddick nominates Atwater and Ellis to be the co-chairs of the charrette.
BEST OF ENEMIES DOCUMENTARY SERIES
Riddick, a black lawyer from Raleigh, has had some previous success employing a traditional Southern consensus-building technique known as a charrette, in which community leaders and ordinary townspeople hash out their differences over an all-inclusive series of discussions, debates, and lowercase-d Democracy. Contrasting this, Ellis is also shown as a devoted family man who supports his long-suffering wife (Heche) and cares for a teenage son with Down syndrome by running the local gas station.įollowing the school fire and with the citizens of Durham wildly divided on what to do next, The Best of Enemies then kicks into a wholly unexpected direction when the hamstrung city council hits upon the idea of calling in Bill Riddick (Ceesay) to help as a sort of impartial mediator to the fragmented community. Ellis is a true believer in the cause: Early on there’s a scene of him, framed in the heat of the lushly humid Durham night, as he and his Klan cohorts shotgun the bejesus out of a white woman’s house after rumor gets around that she’s been seen keeping close company with a black man. Ellis (Rockwell, doing some fine work with little more than four distinct facial expressions throughout). Running parallel to Atwater’s moral mission is Durham’s Klan leader C.P. Atwater’s quixotic quest falls on deaf ears and dumb minds until the local black school burns down under mysterious circumstances, which forces community leaders on both sides of the racial divide to face the alarming prospect of possible integration of the city’s all-white school. The council, however, is (surprise!) entirely composed of KKK members happy to continue the status quo. Henson is Ann Atwater, a middle-aged black activist, community organizer, and all-around force of nature who, as the film begins, is busy hounding the local city council for more affordable housing for the city’s black residents. Leads Henson (barely recognizable under a mountain of Tyler Perry-esque practical makeup) and Rockwell turn in top-notch, emotion-laden performances, buoyed by a supporting cast of equally fine character actors. First-time director Bissell’s film follows the lesser-known story of how Klan stronghold Durham was finally dragged kicking and screaming into line with other proudly Southern cities in terms of integration. Given the current state of race relations in these dis-United States, it falls somewhere between Spike Lee’s recent BlacKkKlansman and Green Book in terms of its “based on a true story”-isms. Buckley and Gore Vidal, this is instead a civil rights period piece focusing on the battle for school integration in Durham, N.C., circa 1971. Not to be confused with the 2015 documentary Best of Enemies on William F.
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