Beloved
Directed by Johnathan Demme, Starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.
Now playing at SilverCity
"Them's that die bad don't stay inna ground," clucks an old busybody towards the end of Beloved, an almost three-hour adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Toni Morrison. She's talking about a malevolent spirit made flesh but also about the legacy of slavery.
The film version is the culmination of a 10-year labour of love for talk show uber-maven Oprah Winfrey. Her lead performance as Sethe, a freed slave who is quite literally haunted by the past marks her first big screen appearance since her Oscar-nominated performance in The Color Purple. The layoff hasn't hurt her. She gives a richly layered and frequently wrenching performance that may snag her a tacky statuette this time.
Securing Oscar-winning director Johnathan Demme certainly didn't hurt either in bringing the hard but magic reality of post Civil War Ohio to life. The first 10 shocking minutes of Beloved will quickly erase any petty concerns you carry into the theatre. It's a stunning introduction to Sethe's ramshackle farmhouse where a violent poltergeist slams the family dog around like a toy and sends her two boys fleeing. Flash forward a decade and her old friend Paul D. (Danny Glover) wanders up the road in search of love and a friendly roost. He's unprepared for the malevolent experience of crossing the threshold but determined to make a life with Sethe in spite of the disapproval of her daughter Denver (Kimberly Elise), who's been rendered a virtual outcast by the violent past. The daily procession of workers and wagons going down the road view the house with horror.
Whatever's haunting the house doesn't care for Paul D getting cozy with Sethe either and sends Beloved (Thandie Newton), a voracious, child-like woman with a voice like a two-pack-a-day smoker, into their lives. Her arrival in the night in a black shroud of a dress is like a beautiful visual poem. She's beguiling and seductive (when she's not stuffing her face like a wild animal that is) but also a creature of rage that drives Paul D and Denver out into the larger world. Newton's performance is the most difficult role and the only occasionally weak link in the film. The seams in her performance only show when she's straining to be the pop-eyed, drooling fiend. The rest of the time she's quite satisfying and is an effective memory trigger that flashes us back to the painful past.
Director Johnathan Demme and his longtime Director of Photography Tak Fujimoto did much experimentation with film stocks to supply the super rich, sepia tones of the flashbacks which range from the sublime to the nightmarish. Veteran actress Beah Richards, who plays Sethe's mother-in-law and self-made holy woman Baby Suggs, absolutely shines in this light. Her down home sermons in the forest clearings are pure lyrical movie making at its best. The sudden bolts of horror induced by the imagery of the lynchings and whippings and Sethe's flight from the Kentucky plantation show Demme in fine Silence of the Lambs form. I can't say enough about the production design of Beloved. The Ohio countryside becomes as strong a character as any of the principals. Terrific use is made of natural images of trees and water and prancing foxes in the fields to forge transitions between scenes and vast tracts of time.
Despite the troubling legion of three screenwriters who crunched down the novel into the screenplay, Beloved only occasionally induces the slightly disjointed feel of a novel incompletely condensed. Characters are sometimes mentioned by name only and no face is put to them which may irritate viewers who've plowed through the novel. Not being in that camp I can only say Beloved sure didn't feel like three hours. It left me drained and satisfied.
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