If you like screechy, overacted, talky, go nowhere movies, you'll like this one. Unfortunately, I don't like them. That's not to criticize anyone who likes this movie. There are different tastes and different movies to accommodate them.<br /><br />Sure, 27 year old Julie Harris looks silly playing a 12 year old. Actors are often older than their parts.<br /><br />And sure, suspension of belief can be seen as the basis of all art. That's not a mountain, that's a painting of one, etc, etc.<br /><br />Sure, this is a play made into a movie with the original cast, so the play could be preserved for all time. That's certainly good.<br /><br />Sure, Ethel Waters is a strong presence and wonderful to see and hear.<br /><br />But, The movie itself is a piece of drek. Don't know what that means? Look it up.<br /><br />Some people have pulled off this method acting quite well. Marlon Brando in his early movies. Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. There, Paul has spurts of talky, preachy, stagy one man shows. But he, the great actor he is, pulled it off. In Member of the Wedding, Julie Harris is endless with it and it's very offensive.<br /><br />If this part had a 12 year old in it, why didn't they find a 12 year old to play it? I don't know what Carson McCullers was thinking, but the part she produced was a 20 something psychotic mental patient. As others observed, having a real 12 year old utter those lines and throw those tantrums would have been laughable. Even those tantrums are more like a 3 year old.<br /><br />When she went out into the "cruel world": All it seems she did was go to a downtown at night. Similar to where she went to visit her father. Yet it was a big surprise that men wanted sex. Do men in downtowns only want sex at night? <br /><br />I can suspend belief. I can accept middle-aged people playing kids, I can stand talky, preachy monologues. But I can't stand something going nowhere. Like I don't like music without melody. I didn't see any plot to this thing. The 12 year old didn't seem different to me at the end. Just as psychotic.<br /><br />I would have preferred a Twilight Zone sort of thing, playing on the audiences' gullibility at suspending belief. At the end, it's revealed that she really is a psychotic 20 something escapee from a mental hospital, and every one else is playing along, because she's a serial killer or something. At least it would have made sense then .<br /><br />In a way, this movie is contemporary. Remember the show "13 going on 30". About the social phenomenon of today's 13 year old girls looking and acting like they are 30? These days, no one would have the guts to actually cast a 30 year old as the 13 year old one. But back then, in Member of the Wedding, they actually did! Oh well, I've had more fun writing this than I did watching the movie. My apologies to those who like it. If it wasn't for diverse tastes, there wouldn't be any movies that I do like, like Howard the Duck. And talk about a talky movie going nowhere!