WHEN they put a high way through the front yard of an antebellum North Carolina manse called Midway, its owners decided to pick up and move – and take the house with them.
The oddly compelling documentary “Moving Midway” is an engineering tale combined with a family history and a ghost story.
Former New York Press film critic Godfrey Cheshire, who made the film, remembers happy childhood days spent in the house, which is today owned by his cousin Charlie. He uses the house as a wedge to break open the family saga – it turns out he has more than 100 black relatives – and muse about the myth of the plantation.
By chance, Cheshire met a black NYU professor who turns out to be descended from slaves who used to work the property and built Midway in 1838. Cheshire invites him over to the house for dinner.
Not all of these parts fit together as smoothly as the house is lifted onto steel girders and whisked away. It’s particularly unfortunate that Cheshire keeps referring to a foolish ghost story about a dead relative whose spirit supposedly inhabits the house, when what really haunts the place is the far more chilling truth of slavery.
Nor does the film delve much into the question of guilt (of the whites involved) or anger (of the blacks). Everyone gets along beautifully, and any buried issues stay hushed – even when Cheshire’s relatives fatuously say that their ancestors must have been nice to their slaves because the family is noted for its good manners.
Still, there is a satisfyingly Faulknerian air of bizarreness about the episode, and the shots of the grand old house being trundled down country roads are amazing. As soon as Midway moved, its once-noble lands were immediately paved over for a Target and a Bed, Bath & Beyond – stores that sit next to an unnoticed slave cemetery.
MOVING MIDWAY
Gone with the U-Haul.
Running time: 98 minutes. Not rated (no problems). At the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza.