BELOVED (Touchstone) Starring: Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise, Beah Richards. Screenplay: Akosua Busia, Richard LaGravenese and Adam Brooks, based on the novel by Toni Morrison. Producers: Edward Saxon, Jonathan Demme, Gary Goetzman, Oprah Winfrey and Kate Forte. Director: Jonathan Demme. MPAA Rating: R (adult themes, nudity, sexual situations, violence) Running Time: 172 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
BELOVED doesn't feel like a typical Oscar-hyped fall "prestige release," full of cathartic emotion and earnest dignity. Its opening minutes portend something quite different: two silent exterior shots, one tracking through a graveyard and the other establishing a rural Ohio home, shift to a scene of sheer supernatural terror. Inside the home, a woman named Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) and her three children cringe in fear as the family dog spins through the air, an eye torn out and a leg broken by an anguished spirit. We learn that the entity is the ghost of another daughter, who has haunted the house long enough for the latest event to drive the two boys away from home. So much for earnest dignity; this is a prestige release as American gothic horror film.
That shouldn't be terribly surprising coming from director Jonathan Demme, who turned 1991's THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS into an Oscar-winning prestige release. Yet this is no more a conventional thriller than it is a conventional epic drama, though it incorporates elements of both. The bulk of the film takes place eight years after that prologue sequence, when the arrival of two strangers shake up the isolated lives of Sethe and her remaining daughter Denver (Kimberly Elise). Paul D (Danny Glover), a former slave with Sethe on the Sweet Home plantation, provides a companionship Sethe hasn't known for years. The other arrival is more mysterious, a child-like woman calling herself Beloved (Thandie Newton). Their interaction, interwoven with selected flashbacks, turns BELOVED into a complex ghost story in which the ghosts take on many forms, attacking both from without and from within.
It's what BELOVED does with the idea of a ghost story that made Toni Morrison's novel so powerful, and makes Demme's film so gripping. The true horror in the story is Sethe's past, the painful and humiliating past of all slaves which involved so many horrifying events. Most film-makers would have taken those events and shown them off with sincere indignation. The images created by Demme and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto are jittery and chilling, designed more to invade the sub-conscious than to inspire tight-lipped head-shaking. Beloved appears initially as a sort of earth-spirit, covered with insects; the bright ribbons of a family celebration become a lingering symbol of decayed hopes. With Oprah Winfrey effectively conveying Sethe's hollow-eyed resignation, BELOVED shows how a tormented past can corrupt the present to the point that it feels perpetually haunted, holding meaning only as a constant reminder of unforgettable evils.
If BELOVED had intended merely to shock and dismay, it would have been a very shallow and disspiriting experience. Instead, it becomes a call to the living to dare existing in the present, conveyed through two supporting characters marvelously performed. Kimberly Elise takes Denver on a journey from trying to re-capture her own past -- treating Beloved both as her own child and as the sister she never knew -- to shaking herself and Sethe into a desire for survival. Stronger still is the bright angel of the deceased Baby Suggs (Beah Richards), Denver's paternal grandmother and the spiritual leader of her community. Her glorious sermons, which call all around to celebrate their bodies even as they acknowledge sorrow, provide stirring punctuation for this tale. As counterpoint to Sethe's inability to forgive herself, Baby Suggs enjoins her listeners to "kiss your hands; love your heart."
BELOVED is such a side-ranging story that it's bound to feel slightly disjointed at times. The flashback to Sethe's escape from Sweet Home feels particularly drawn out, slowing down a nearly three-hour film. It's impressive, however, that three different screenwriters could create so cohesive an adaptation. Demme infuses BELOVED with the feverish intensity of a recurring nightmare, then leaves us with hope of awakening to a new day. There is emotion, yes, and dignity; there is also evil, and even horror. I can only think of one way to categorize a film like BELOVED: it may be the most uplifting horror film you'll ever see.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 immortal beloveds: 9.
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