La liberté au bout du chemin

I forget when I saw the film or where, but it stayed with me. I really feel the film never got its appropriate praise or fan fair, but maybe some films are meant to be discovered by people as hidden gems and aren't meant to be touted as classics. Though I feel this one is.

I felt that Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek were the cornerstones of the film and deepened the work by providing three dimensional characters that had more to do than just worry about a cause. They had lives to lead and families to raise and the film focuses on their daily living and how they lived it with this larger situation going on around them.

This choice of direction brings us into the story much quicker because it focuses on the people and the impact the situation has on them.

What stays with me is the subtlety and how small gestures can have a great impact.

My favorite movies are about people. Real people interest me more than perfect people. This movie kept me interested.

I bought this film on clearance and when I saw the $7.99 price tag I thought to myself - 'This is worth so much more' And it is!

Just rewatched this movie on YouTube. Taking place during the bus boycott of 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, maid Odessa Cotter (Whoopi Goldberg) resolves to walk but her employer Miriam Thompson (Sissy Spacek) decides to drive her for at least a couple of days of the week to her house. I'll stop there and just say this was quite an inspiring, if intense, drama about how oppressive it could be during that time if you were not only the wrong color but also the wrong gender, that is, if you weren't a white male. I mean, the way Miriam's husband Norman (Dwight Schultz) and his younger brother Tunker (Dylan Baker) felt threatened by the whole thing makes one wonder. And the way Odessa's teen kids, Selma (Erika Alexander) and Theodore (Richard Habersham) were almost completely defeated by those white teen boys definitely gave me a pause. Not to mention how openly bigoted Miriam's mother (Gleaves Azar) said her opinion in front of the help was so blatantly appalling to see. What gives one hope is not only the way Miriam and Odessa communicate with each other, but also the way the narration of the grown Thompson daughter Mary Catherine (voice of Mary Steenburgen, Lexi Randall as a child) assures us how poignantly inspiring the whole time was. So on that note, The Long Walk Home gets a high recommendation from me. P.S. Ving Rhames-several years before his star-making turn in Pulp Fiction-portrays Odessa's husband Herbert with hair. Richard Habersham was Eddie in Do the Right Thing the year before. Younger brother Franklin was played by Jason Weaver who would later be the singing voice of Young Simba in The Lion King. He's also, like me, a Chicago native. And Erika Alexander would become Cousin Pam on "The Cosby Show" after making this.

This movie should be shown to every White person over the age of 16! The reason I say that is because it tells the cold, hard truth of what Blacks had to go through back in the 60's and it's not sugarcoated at all. It's not being said to make people feel guilty over something that they probably never took part in, but to educate people in what most public school systems DON'T teach about. As someone of primarily Native American descent who considers themselves pretty educated about Black history, I myself was very shocked and saddened at the brutality that Black Americans had to face (and still do at times). A picture (or movie) is worth a thousand words. This movie would be educational to everyone who views it. I would definitely recommend this movie to others.

My mother grew up in the south so I remember going to visit Grandmother and wondering about the cook, Callie. She was silent and frowned at us and we were told to stay away from the kitchen. I think she was at the point of resentment and though my parents didn't like segregation my cousins and aunts and uncles thought it was the only acceptable way. I find in sharing this movie with younger people today they are shocked at the behavior at the party and in the park. They don't realize that life was really like that in some places. I like to improve sensitivity by showing the film and discussing it as groups when we can.

I saw this film by chance, was flipping through the movie channels one day and the description of it appealed to me. Goldberg is absolutely superb in this powerful film showing what it was like for black people at that time in Montgomery, Alabama. A good lesson to young people, or any person that does not fully know what black people had to put up with.