Miss Evers' Boys - Die Gerechtigkeit siegt

I went to the "Spiked" website and read the article mentioned in the previous post. That article is a fancy bit of rationalization. The bottom line is you don't promise anyone hope in the face of possible death when that hope was nothing more than a lie to begin with. That is the heart and soul of why this movie is so important. It does expose a terrible lie perpetrated upon unsuspecting people. If they had been told the truth, it would have been morally different. In fact, the eventual monetary compensation the men and families received was too small for a lifetime of hopes and deception.

The article on "Spiked" only made me appreciate the movie and the excellent acting all that much more.

The acting was powerful, and it looked like a labor of love. I think everyone involved with this film must have felt the weight of purpose for getting out the truth of what had happened. It is one of the best acted, most well written movies ever and I encourage people to see it.

"MEB" tells the story of the infamous "Tuskeegee Syphilis Study" by building the docudrama around a black nurse (Woodard) who hailed from the black community which was the focus of the study. The polished and well crafted film spends equal time with the lives of the Macon County black sharecroppers and the questions of medical ethics the study raised resulting in an entertaining as well as informative watch. A nice mix of docu and drama, fact and fiction.

Most viewers agree that the betrayal of Nurse Evers and Dr.Brodus was heinous. Regardless of whatever medical oath is taken, God's Commandments come first. And that goes for the military also. What makes Nurse Ever's and Dr.Brodus's actions more fiendish is the fact of allowing these men to live normal lives while participating in this study. Normal as being, continuing to have sexual relations with their unknowing wives, as well as other women in their community. Giving birth to children from those sexual relations in which those children entered the world infected over a 40 year period. They speak of numbers (412), but in fact , it really numbered into the thousands considering that several generations of men, woman, and children were infected through this study. In my eyes, that amounts to genocide which was sanctioned by the CDC.

Eunice Evers is a nurse who gets involved in treatment trials of Afro-Americans in the south for syphilis. She helps the doctors treat many hundreds of men but then the Government cuts the funding and replaces it with funding for a study that the disease works the same in blacks as much as whites. However the study removes the treatment for a set period and lets the men slowly fade away.

From the HBO stable of TV movies, I was attracted by the fact that it was based on a true story that I was not aware of, plus it had a few good actors in the lead roles. The story is potentially quite moving and I don't know why the tvm didn't manage to bring that across very well. It was told reasonably well but it never had me really touched or moved. That said the story was still quite good, even if it could easily have lost a bit of running time – the senate hearing was a good frame for telling the story. It was just a major problem for me that the film wasn't gripping and wasn't powerful, I mean, the Government sanctioned these men's deaths for the greater good – why isn't this film setting TV sets alight!?

The cast are pretty good in the main roles but not as strong in support. In support the actors mainly just do some mugging and play African-American workingmen stereotypes. Woodard is a good actress and gives a great performance in the lead. Fishburne and Morton lend support with small but important roles and the support cast have a few nice character pieces.

Overall this is an uninvolving film and I don't really understand why at all; the story is true and powerful and the cast are all reasonably good. However the film is flat for most of the telling – it's worth seeing once but it is more of a slog than it should be.

I bought this together with "A Lesson Before Dying" by the same director and whilst I found the latter well-filmed, engrossing and very good on character analysis, I found Miss Evers' Boys to be a bit of a disappointment. You don't really get taken up into the story. Picture quality is hazy and fuzzy and you end up wondering really where Miss Evers was going in life ........... nowhere ! When you read the synopsis, you think you're in for a good, emotional, heart-rending story. However, that is not the impression which was conveyed to me. Miss Evers' even refuses romance, which could have been a saving grace. Why didn't she subtilise more penicillin if she was so concerned ? I tend to like these "racial" dramas, even though they are over-romanticized, but this one left me pretty near cold !