BELOVED
A Film Review by Brian Takeshita
Rating: ** out of ****
The day after I saw this film, someone asked me if it was good or bad. Honestly, it took me a few moments to come up with an answer. You see, BELOVED, based on the novel by Toni Morrison, is good in so many ways, yet terrible on such a fundamental level as to be inexcusable. While most movies have pros and cons, this one suffered from faults that were so glaring, they seemed to cancel many of the meritorious aspects.
Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) is an escaped slave living in Ohio with her teenage daughter Denver (Kimberly Elise). When Denver and her siblings were still very young, Sethe's master came up from Kentucky to claim his "property," and in a confused frenzy, Sethe attempted to kill all four of her children so they would not be taken back. In her desperate attempt, Sethe was only able to knock the eldest three children unconscious, but managed to kill her youngest daughter, who's spirit haunted their house ever since. This haunting isn't the type that opens a cabinet door now and then, or moves a spoon from the kitchen counter to the living room when nobody's looking. When Paul D (Danny Glover), a fellow slave from Kentucky, comes into the house and takes an obvious romantic interest in Sethe, the spirit shakes the structure to the foundation and hurls a table across the room, threatening to cut Paul D in half. No wonder Sethe's two boys ran away years ago.
The romance that blossoms between Sethe and Paul D is both a reawakening and reconciliation of Sethe's past. By getting reacquainted with someone who shared her experiences on the plantation, it is clear that Sethe can now vocalize some of the most horrible moments of her life, and in doing so, gain strength from the fact that she survived. Paul D's arrival also fills the hole left by the husband whom Sethe never saw after escaping from Kentucky. However, as much as Sethe manages to put her life together and become happy once again, the child that she killed continues to haunt her.
In essence, this film is about a woman trying to come to terms with her past, and in that respect, BELOVED is very engaging. While Sethe is seen as a strong woman early on, her transformation into a whole person is tangible, and Winfrey, who delivers a startlingly convincing performance, gets much of the credit for this. In developing the relationships between man and woman, and mother and daughter, BELOVED is also able to provide several dimensions to the storyline. Danny Glover is a joy to watch on screen as he gives an earth-natural performance of a very likable character, and capitalizes upon the significant chemistry between Winfrey and himself. Kimberly Elise is also very impressive as the daughter who must vie for the attention of her mother, while consistently supporting her in every way she can.
Director Jonathan Demme emerses us so deeply in the period that we really get a good feeling for what it was like in the mid-1800's. We watch from beginning to end as Sethe makes biscuits from scratch and bakes them in a cast-iron stove. We are witness to the continual process of scrubbing wooden board floors, and the ungainly drudgery of using a pole to assist in doing the laundry in a tub of boiling water. So many details provide an interesting authenticity to this film, and it pays off by allowing us to share in the day-to-day experiences of the characters, and therefore appreciate them a little more.
This human aspect of the film is so interesting and full of possibilities that it could have been it's own movie. In fact, it should have been, because the second aspect, the supernatural subplot, only weighs down the rest of the film. The haunting scenes seem out of place and totally unnecessary, as if someone had gotten the great idea that by combining two absolutely different films, he could somehow take advantage of some kind of cinematic economy of scale. Worse yet, Sethe's youngest becomes tired of mere haunting and materializes as a teenage girl in front of the family house. Just like she showed up at the door, so did this subplot.
Thandie Newton plays Beloved, the re-embodied spirit, in a way that leads you to believe that although the character's body is the age it would have been had she lived, her mind is still that of an infant or young adolescent. Newton's performance is quite proficient, although it does become rather grating after a while. If an infant learned to talk, would we really want to listen to its blathering all the time? What I couldn't figure out was why the whole thing seemed so normal to the main characters. After getting over an initial shock, all involved just take living in a haunted house with a grain of salt, and accept the fact that a dead relative returned from the grave.
Beloved's presence exists for the sole purpose of symbolizing Sethe's past coming back to haunt her, ironically returning Sethe to a figurative state of slavery. Sethe's world is turned upside-down, and her own very existence is subjugated to the care of her newly returned daughter. However, BELOVED's supernatural element is so extraneous that the film could easily have been turned into a very compelling conventional human drama. Whenever we see Newton's character, it's like a second story trying to insinuate itself into the one we're watching. It's strange, cumbersome, and distracting, so why not just take it out altogether? We could still have Sethe struggle with her own conscience without all of the weirdness. Now that would be a film I'd like to see.
Review posted October 28, 1998
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