The Opening Shot
The opening shot of the film effectively communicates to the viewer the time, place and perverse ideological consciousness of the setting through not just imagery, but a single image held on-screen unbroken by editing for an astonishing 47 seconds that seems excruciatingly longer: a drab concrete wall in a badly lit hall split directly down the center of the screen by a single water pipe which delivers water from the exact same source to a drinking fountain for Whites on the left and a drinking fountain for Coloreds on the right. In less than one full minute, the director has revealed the single most important information a viewer needs to understand everything which follows without resorting to a music cue on the soundtrack or any fancy editing. In fact, the only movement on the screen at all is the appearance of first a white man and then later a young black boy taking a sip from their appropriately segregated fountains.
The Murders
The murder of only one of the three civil rights workers which brings the FBI to a nothing bit of dirt in Mississippi is actually show on screen and though literally taking up only two seconds of screen time, it is graphic. But it is the imagery of the other two murders that is infinitely more powerful despite the fact that they could hardly be any less graphic. After the first shooting, the screen goes black and only the sound of the homicidal gunshots indicate what occurs. Into the blank expanse of the blackness appears a screen title in simple
Without even showing who did what after the first shot was fired, this imagery cements into the mind of the vwhite letters: Mississippi, 1964. Meanwhile, all that is heard are disembodied southern accents belonging to an indeterminate number of unidentified men laughing at the gunman’s racist “joke.”
“Y’all only left me a n*gger, but at least I shot me a n*gger.”iewer all they will ever possibly need to know about these men. Specificities are literally so unimportant that they don’t need to be shown; this is a collective entity operating without laws or conscience or, seemingly, even a working brain stem. The intensity of this scene is such that many will find themselves wishing none of the murders had been graphically portrayed.
The Sound of Silence
The imagery associated with Mississippi Burning is very much focused on the power of the visual component of film-making, but one of its most brutal scenes directly engages sound to fuel its intensity. Not by turning the volume up, but just the opposite. The sequence in which the Klan arrives at a black church service at night to terrorize the congregation and burn the building down commences with the horrific sound of recognition by the black parishioners of what is to come when they empty out and see the hooded terrorists awaiting them. As all hell breaks loose, scene of white hooded men chasing and beating defenseless and black men, women and children the sound of screams and the sound effects of the beatings are in perfect harmony with what has come before. Quickly, but still gradually, the sounds of torture become muted to the point of silence as the strains of a gospel song takes over the soundtrack. The imagery of the terrorism of the cowardly Klan armed with clubs and hiding behind hoods is made all the more vivid and terrifying as a result of the silence of the attack.
The Closing Shot
Like the film's opening shot, the closing shot of the film centers on just one single simple image: the desecrated tombstone at the grave of a civil rights worker murdered by Klansman. Sheared in two with the top half lying in rubble around it, the only part of the inscription still legible reads “1964 Not Forgotten.” And there in that simple image is the entire point of the film. It does not exist to serve a factual documentation, but as entertainment powerful enough to burn the message into the minds of every viewer. The actual factual events on which the film is based cannot ever be allowed to dissipate in the memory.
