What Hath Oprah Wrought?
Review of Beloved (1998)
Seen on Halloween 1998 by myself at the SONY Loews Orpheum for $8.75
One of the rules by which I judge a screen adaptation i that the director make sure the movie stands on its own merits, and not the novels from which they are derived.
Oprah Winfrey has touted *Beloved* as a *Schindler's List* for African-Americans. It fails where the other succeeds. To understand the horrors of the Holocaust, they were shown. In *Beloved*, the horrors of slavery are not shown as often as they are referenced in many flashbacks. Much more time is spent being horrified by the past, which is unveiled in a slow, plodding manner that stalls in the metaphysical mishmash of it's presentation.
The storyline jumps around: It opens in 1855 with the haunting of a black family in Ohio. A deadly ghost is present. Then, the story jumps ahead to eight years in the future, where Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) lives in isolation with her daughter Denver (Kimberly Elise) when Paul D (Danny Glover) arrives from out of nowhere. He is a fellow former slave from "Sweet Home"--the plantation where he and Sethe once toiled. Why they almost immediately have sex is inexplicable, as are many elements of this ultimately disappointing film.
Out of the bogswamp arrives Beloved (Thandie Newton), who is either fashioned by insects or just very at home with nature. She cannot talk and is a mystery to the entire family, but she becomes a (strange) part of the family--a sister for the lonely Denver, and a replacement daughter for Sethe's lost infant. But sibling rivalries flare up as Beloved gravitates to Sethe, only to torment her.
Meanwhile, there are lots of flashbacks. Lots and lots of them. Maybe too many? The most interesting is the story of a pregnant younger Sethe (well played by Lisa Gay Hamilton, who looks *nothing* like Oprah's Sethe) escaping the horrors (sexual abuse and the lynching of Sethe's mother) of "Sweet Home" to go north to Ohio. She is befriended by a white woman (Amy Denver, played by Kessia Randall) who helps her give birth and make it to the home of her mother-in-law Baby Suggs (Beah Richards).
Jonathan Demme's direction cannot help the "stream of unconciousness" of Toni Morrison's novel, which in turn is problematic. It took three writers to adapt the screenplay. But Demme does some strange things along the way. Clouds zip by in fast motion... why? There are some wonderful lingering shots of the natural surroundings, and the most visually compelling scene is the one in which Baby Suggs preaches to folks in the woods. Demme bathes here in an overexposure that makes her golden.
Meanwhile, Beloved (in an outstanding performance by Newton) spins out of control, eating everything with two hands balled into fists, and running around naked. Please don't ask why--I don't know. Maybe Oprah knows.
Unlike *Schindler's List*, *Beloved* is just a psychodrama on acid, that fails to systematically explain slavery's horrors in a way that is accessible. Too much is expected of the viewer; we are expected to know historical conditions and the novel. A movie featuring characters named Schoolteacher, Buglar, Running Boy, Stamp Paid, and the Thirty Women should have been lyrical, haunting, poetic. Instead, it's a thematic mess that takes translates every aspect of the book with no explanation. Who are the Thirty Women anyway? Why include them and not explain them?
What would have been a *fantastic* movie would have been to delve into the relationship between Denver and her grandmother, the spiritual preacherwoman Baby Suggs. The story unwisely centers on crazy Sethe when the real gold lies in Denver's neglect, and her ability to rise above the insanity of her upbringing and persevere.
Oh, and the movie's too long. But the music was nice.
Oprah Winfrey is one of the producers, and she plugged it endlessly to her loyal audience, saying how the movie "changed people's lives." I mean no disrespect to the Black experience in panning this movie. There are so many other better movies and plays--*Roots*, *Queen*, *The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman*, *The Piano Lesson*, etc. And there might be an even better one out there yet to depict the legacy of slavery, but in narrative form, as PBS's *Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery* took the documentary route.
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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