 Beloved (1998) I was surprised when I heard that Beloved was going to be made into a movie, as I thought the novel was far too deep and layered to ever bring out successfully on the screen. Morrison's prose is dense, interior, and lyrical, and its poetic quality would certainly be lost on film. I was more surprised that the film manages to stay very faithful to the book, capturing a lot of its meaning, but not achieving anywhere near the book's emotional power. The central event of Beloved involves a woman killing her own children rather than give them up to the slaveholder who fathered them – not the typical Hollywood subject matter – and the film hedges a bit when it comes to unleashing the horror of this violent act. It offers a lot of appropriate set-up and character development, but at the key moment when the core of the story is revealed, it is done much too conservatively. The book Beloved is truly harrowing, the film is merely thought-provoking. Where I thought it should make you weep or scream, you usually just shook your head or muttered. Many people comment negatively on Oprah Winfrey's involvement with Beloved, and these are usually the same people who think that Oprah exerts a Mesmer-like influence over her audience. They see her promoting a book like Beloved on her show, and the book becoming a bestseller the following week, and conclude that she's a brainwasher. I wish those people would shut up. The fact that anyone is inspired to go buy Beloved based on a talk show host's recommendation says more about the credibility of the host than the gullibility of her audience. At the same time, I wonder how many people who bought the book because Oprah loved it actually finished it—it's not exactly an easy read. Similarly, I wonder how many understood what the hell was going on in the movie Beloved—the plot was was pretty straightforward, but Jonathan Demme compromises the interior nature of the dialogue and setting. The film is gritty and organic, and almost without the trappings of the usual big-budget movie. I say almost because the performances, all around, occasionally veer into a very Hollywood level of ridiculousness. Lines that needed to be dramatic occasionally come off as laughable. Danny Glover is often amazing in the film, and sometimes just a parody of himself and every freed-slave character ever put into a big movie (remember the freed slave character he played in Lethal Weapon 2? Same shtick here, minus the car chases). Oprah is awesome, but doesn't always invest her dialogue with great emotional weight. Sometimes it seemed like the dialogue was just a bunch of words—although I'm not sure how Toni Morrison's prose could have been adequately put into script format. Thandie Newton as Beloved is a difficult character – she is, after all, basically a zombie, but Newton's performance makes it believable. She is scary, menacing, pathetic, intriguing, bewitching, and always the center of the scene. But as the film goes on, you realize you've seen everything you need to see about the Beloved; she's a static character that exhausts her surprises within 15 minutes. After an hour you start seeing her more or less in sitcom terms. She even has a catch phrase ("Tellllll meeeee."), so don't be surprised if you see Jasmine Guy cropping up on a summer replacement show sometime playing the lovable ghost-turned-flesh with the hilarious quirks (not to mention her nosy neighbors and on-again, off-again boyfriend, played by Darius McRary). "Beloved, you're late on the rent again!" screams her gruff but lovable landlord Mr. Henderson (played with aplomb by Sherman Hemsley). "Telllllll meeeee …" she croaks, spitting a mouthful of flies at him. Cue laugh track. It's a shame that Beloved was not a better movie. It was certainly braver and more ambitious than most of the films that came out this year, but somehow it just emerged flat and disconnected. Very interesting, at times amazing, and without question worth seeing, Beloved is still a very flawed film. Jonathan Demme does a better job of directing it than I'd have predicted from a white guy, and the cinematography is challenging and fresh. Unfortunately, it just doesn't pack the punch it needed to. Read the book, I say, with that Mesmer-like suggestive ability I possess. And since I couldn't work it in anywhere else, I'll now mention that there's a great shot of Oprah peeing like a fire hose. I say she should edit that into the intro for her TV show, but then I guess it's no big surprise that I don't ever get put in charge of decisions like that.
Review by Bouncey |