The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Back in 2011, Rebeccas Skloot published "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and I read this excellent book. The thrust of the book was three-fold: about the contribution of Henrietta's cells to medical research, about the life of Henrietta that Skloot was able to piece together with the help of her family and about her relationship with Henrietta's family. This new film essentially breezes through the first two plot lines and focuses almost exclusively with the relationship between Skloot (Rose Byrne) and Henrietta's mentally ill daughter, Deborah (Oprah Winfrey). Winfrey was amazingly good in her role...but this plot line seemed to be THE film at times and if you want to learn more about Henrietta as well as what made her cancer cells so important, I suggest you just read the book. Overall, well done but far, far from perfect.

It's a good biographical drama, but the only problem is its not what exactly the title says. If you believed to learn about Henrietta Lacks and went to see it, you might end disappointingly. Because she was the only topic of the story, not the actual story, except a few glimpses. It is like you watched 'Infamous' or 'Capote', instead of 'In Cold Blood'. That's what like this film. Yet not a bad film.

A writer pursuing the family members of a person who lived in the mid 20th century, because she was a medical phenomenon. Her cells used to treat cancer, despite she had died of cancer, leaving her young kids behind. Her descendants not aware of how things work in the medical research, only misguided by others, finally, set to discover the truth themselves about all the fuss.

It was nominated for the Emmy, but did not win. Oprah was okay, but Rose Byrne impressed me. Except a misleading title, it is a good film, but I really wanted/want to know the Henrietta Lacks. That's funny, because they have told us an unnecessary story. I hope somebody would make a film about actual Henrietta Lacks!

5.5/10

I was hoping for so much more. I have not read the book, so I don't know how well the film depicted the book. I just felt utterly confused at some scenes. The editing was disjointed and parts of the story seemed to be missing, jumping from one emotion or conversation to another with no explanation. I love Rose Byrne but her character was clearly just a sidekick and there was NO chemistry with Ms. O, I wonder if they even got along during filming?

Rarely has an excellent book been so poorly transferred to the screen. You can definitely see Oprah's influence on what was going to be in the screenplay. Gone is almost every scene that would show us Henrietta and HER life, so that Oprah, as her daughter, could monopolize the film. Sad. My advice, read the book instead.

I was so excited to see this movie, as the book has been on my list to read for awhile. I had not gotten around to reading the book prior to seeing the movie & perhaps that would have helped?

The movie is disjointed & makes little sense. It is primarily about Henrietta's daughter & her relationship with the book's author. I was okay with that, but characters were never explained & many decisions in the film & dialogue made no sense b/c the story wasn't flushed out enough to understand the importance of the choices or dialogue. For example the "talk to the men" theme is made a big deal of in the beginning. It's repeated several times. It's never explained though. Why were they insistent that Skloot could only talk to the men. It came from several characters, but then most of the movie is spent NOT talking to the men. It never made any sense. Some character's behavior was not explained until almost the end of the film, which really hurt the viewer's ability to empathize & warm to the characters.

It was such a shame as there were many great actors who performed well, but ultimately the lack of background info & poor choices, made this movie a mess. I had such high hopes :-( I'm still looking fwd to reading the book, maybe that will fill in the huge gaps of the movie. You won't miss much if you skip this one!