BELOVED
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Touchstone Pictures Director: Jonathan Demme Writer: Akosua Busia, Richard LaGravenese, Adam Brooks, novel by Toni Morrison Cast: Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberly Elise, Beah Richards, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Albert Hall
Each year that I taught American History in high school I became accustomed to a question from one of the 16-year- olds, often, surprisingly in an honors program, which challenged the evils of slavery. "After all," a serious-minded teen would pipe up, not ironically, but altogether in earnest, "Slaves may not have been able to do as they chose, but they had jobs for life, they were expensive and not likely to be mistreated, they were taken care of when they got too old to work." Of course even given the possibility of some truth in this, the whole question ignores the fundamental principle of American democracy: that of freedom, which is just an abstraction to kids who have had computers to play with, a comforting home to take shelter in. Unfortunately, the record shows that many slaves were owned by sadistic masters who would beat them ("they're just property, aren't they?") and allow their young men to take sexual liberties with ("Boys will be boys, won't they?")
I hope these kids will see Jonathan Demme's startling, idiosyncratic new film, "Beloved." Two of the African- Americans focused upon have recently come out of slavery. One in particular, Sethe (Oprah Winfrey), is afflicted with memories that would be enough to send a person with less emotional vigor to an institution, where she would likely spend her days climbing the walls or huddled safely in a corner of the room. It's 1873, eight years following the emancipation of slaves nationwide, and Sethe is living with a teenaged daughter, Denver (Kimberle Elise) in a ramshackle isolated shack she was somehow able to buy on the outskirts of Cincinnati. Theirs is a humble home and, ironically enough, as the saying goes, there's no place like it. Nor are you ever likely to see another movie like "Beloved," Oprah Winfrey's visualization of the perfect vehicle for her style of acting. "Beloved" is more a lyric piece than a melodrama, a film that has been faithfully adapted by Akosua Busia, Richard LaGravanese and Adam Brooks from a Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Toni Morrison. As a film, it is as likely to be respected by those for whom Ms. Morrison's writings are too circuitous, too precious, and altogether too challenging; loved by those who cherish her rhythmic means of expression. It is part horror story, both in the style of "The Exorcist" and in the more earthy form of the genre like "Amistad." And it is part fable of fear, murder and redemption, which dangles its central character between her horrific remembrances and the possibility of a promising new life. Particularly utilizing the skills of photographer Tak Fujimoto and editor Carol Littleton, Jonathan Demme directs a film of pathos, terror, and rescue by the most serviceable procedure: the use of both fleeting jolts of recollection to furnish us almost subliminally with the inhumanities of the peculiar institution, and extended flashbacks which provide us with a more substantial illustration of slavery's barbarisms.
The story opens dramatically in 1865 on Sethe's battered Ohio quarters briefly having us believe that the movie was influenced by William Friedkin. Red lights flash and a dog flies across the room, shaking in what appears to be an epileptic fit. 124 Bluestone Road is a haunted house, yet one which in which its inhabitants feel bound to stay, morally as well as physically. Eight years after this supernatural demonstration, Sethe is visited by Paul D (Danny Glover), a former slave whom Sethe knew and who has been wandering by foot across the countryside for years. Looking for a place to roost, he asks Sethe for quarters: Sethe coyly agrees, though the ghost which has taken root in the home shows her displeasure at the visitor. When a bizarre young woman washes up fromthe river, scarcely able to speak, she is taken in by the family, which learn that her name is Beloved (Thandie Newton). Beloved does not speak so much as grunt as though she were raised by wolves and has just come into the human world. Despite her attractive appearance-- possessing the skin of a baby and feet that seem never to have walked before--she is feral, eating like a beast, drooling, and from time to time pushing Sethe, Paul D and Denver to the limits of their tolerance.
For the remainder of the film's almost three hours, Demme- -never straying from Toni Morrison's vision--evokes the terror of slavery not so much as melodrama in the mode of Stephen Spielberg's more earthbound "Amistad," but by hints, allusions, at most brief moments of brutality. Even in a scene going back to the 1850's, depicting plantation owner School Teacher's hooligan sons drinking milk straight from Sethe's breasts, the vista is momentary as though a disembodied dream bereft of vivid emotion. At times the story apexes into moments of high drama, particularly in scenes involving the title character, who cries out in protest against the Medea-like deed of her mother eighteen years earlier: "Why you have me? Why you leave me?" and it is at points like these that the account, until then shards of activity that come across like segregated pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, come together. Sethe has escaped from the plantation ironically entitled "Sweet Home," has given birth on the Kentucky side of a river, and has transported herself to freedom in Ohio. But on her 29th day of freedom, her owners have located her and Sethe, rather than allow her one-month old daughter to become subjected to bondage where the white men would soon be "measuring her behind before tearing it up," she slits the little girl's throat.
While Oscar talk is already centered on Oprah Winfrey in the role of Sethe and Danny Glover as her main man Paul D, the real find of the film is Thandie Newton who rivets attention each moment she appears on the screen as the ghost of the murdered girl. For those in the audience who, after a couple of hours have gone by, still do not get the purport of the story, Demme introduces another poltergeist, Baby Suggs (Beah Richards), an old woman who is the novelist's raissoneur, whose monologue to an assembled group of ex-slaves delivers the essence: "Here in this place, we flesh, flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it...Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it....Love your hands....Raise them up and kiss them...'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it."
"Beloved" is a powerful tale yet one which requires patience and attention, a willingness to allow an accumulation of detail to yield a fleshed-out fable. A story of a woman with a frightful deed on her conscience, one which allows her no peace, "Beloved" deals with a former slave who must simultaneously raise a willful teen and a mutinous ghost, the latter both victim and accuser. To the production's credit, nothing is dumbed down in this movie which is allegiant to the author's vision, one which both stays true to the role of film as a visual instrument and to its ability to cast itself as a literary medium. It is serious, entertaining, filled with laudable performances, a must-see for people who respect the cinema as a potent means of communication.
Rated R. Running Time: 172 minutes.(C) 1998 Harvey Karten
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