Beloved - L'ombra del passato

READ THE BOOK, PEOPLE, READ THE BOOK! The book helped me understand the film and the film helped me understand the book. This is an amazing piece of work. Winfrey gives a moving and observant performance and Thandie Newton is startling. Some scenes are intense, making you think whether you would kill your child. I didn't notice any gliches and I think the film screams for Oscars. I think this whole slave movie thing going on is getting boring but when they are made with such power and great directing and acting, I praise God for it! Demme gives us one of the most touching ghost stories and certainly the strangest, in a while.

Famous feminist writer, Toni Morrison, deserved to win a Pulitzer Prize for her historical novel that represents Black American's struggles with slavery and freedom.

How anyone, let alone hundreds of voters here, could rate this marvelously directed & performed film a 1 is beyond me. Oprah Winfrey is the leading lady of the cast who ultimately demonstrates what is an Oscar-entitled performance.

Sethe, the character Winfrey plays is one of the most complex & challenging ones that I can imagine for any actor to take upon themselves. In fact, Winfrey stayed so true to her character, in my mind, she became Sethe: a former slave mother, a million & a half miles away from a Oprah the billionaire guest show host in Chicago! Danny Glover also gave a grand performance that was equally far from any other role I've seen him play. He & Winfrey together are a fine big screen match who I hope are in movies with Pulitzer prize winning plots as thick as is this one.

I read Beloved in an intro English course and it took me a long while to get used to Toni Morrison's writing style. She once said in an interview that she wrote the book to be disorienting, in some ways to re-enact the feeling of the slave diaspora.

I thought the book heart-wrenching, at times gut-wrenching, and vivid. The character of Paul D never made much sense, seeming like a man waiting for something to happen, but Sethe burned off the page. What I remember most is Baby Suggs' speech at the rock, which the film has divided into three segments.

I projected Beloved for the college theater and I have to say it was long and arduous, especially if you haven't read the novel. There is no SENSE to the PAIN that goes on with these characters; in Braveheart and Titanic, we have a certain tragic pleasure in mass death or torture that we can't receive from Beloved. I read a lot of comments talking about the ghost in Beloved, but the ghost is more of a catalyst for looking into the characters than the star of the film.

I admired the time put in most. It just seemed like Demme and Tak Fujimoto, and the lighting designer as well, gave the actors the time they needed to act and sink into things: unlike traditional MTV-editing, some scenes were comprised of only one shot, usually tracking, as Paul D and Sethe in the cornfield. The score was brilliant; Portman really found a grace in stillness and the trembling African voice and the flute. It was bare but riveting at the same time.

People have said that the film went for too much shock value. That's possible- did we need the close-up of the dead child at the breast? No. But then again when we read it in the book, don't we think of it? Don't we for a split second see that image in our heads? I for one thought of much more graphic things when Morrison discussed Paul D and Beloved's night in the shed. The camera and the actors treat the world of Beloved and the audience with respect. Winfrey does seem more like someone who loves Sethe's character, than Sethe herself, but she did it for me. The sadness, the strength, emptiness, she did it, and Lisa Gay Hamilton as the young Sethe was riveting with her time in the film. The look in her eyes when Schoolteacher says "Animal" is amazing.

Danny Glover always does a good job, but he didn't really amaze me. For me, you know what you're getting with Glover, nice guy, troubled soul, easy-going with fits of rage every now and then. It's what he likes to play, and he does it well here but no surprises. The surprises are Winfrey, and Kimberly Elise especially in those crucial minutes when she decides to leave home, the fear and determination on her face. (She somehow becomes more sexual by the end of the film when she sees Paul D.) Thandie Newton is incredibly freaky and disgusting as Beloved with the exception of that ONE long gaze she gives Danny Glover that night, seduction, perfect symmetry. And Beah Richards as Baby Suggs: I wanted her to be my mother. She broke my heart with her religion: "This is the prize. This is the prize." The preaching scenes are INCREDIBLE in this film, especially since Tak Fujimoto chooses a circular tracking shot that allows them to do it all at once.

There isn't much redemption at the end. Sethe is drained and miserable. Paul D is on his own but still not totally free. I think Roger Ebert's comment put it best: the happy ending of Beloved is that the ordeal is OVER. There is no sense to the pain, but one hopes at the end that there can be healing.

I loved this film. I loved the fact that it's not hammering any one message home, but you can take things about motherhood, race, brutality, the dangers of love and commitment, freedom, and chains out with you: it's all there. And it is as beautiful as it is wrenching.

Beloved the movie seeks to rival Beloved the novel in telling the African-American story. While it could not attempt to capture all of the richness of Morrison's great novel, it does do what it can in the constraints of a feature movie. The performances are phenomenal, and any Oscar nominations will be well deserved. The Ohio/Kentucky background takes one's breath away and the movie really does grip its viewer during key scenes

However, Morrison's non-linear style did not translate as well on the big screen and the flashbacks are truly confusing at points. Moreover, the movie has about three natural climaxes which heighten the viewer's awareness of the length of the movie.

All told, it is a good movie, but it is not a must-see movie, nor will it have the cultural impact Oprah intended.

(As for no likeable white characters which some posts have charged, first Mr. Baldwin is a likeable white person. Second, in a post-slavery society of Ohio/Kentucky, why do there have to be any good whites in this narrow world? Oh yeah, don't be mad at Oprah for that--Morrison didn't include any in her book either)

Beloved is one of the best movies of the last decade. I have read many, many reviews which seem to have been written by those who have little to no idea of just how complex and difficult Toni Morrison's original novel can be. Of course Beloved (the movie) will be long, and of course it will be emotionally draining and even confusing - the book was! That said, I loved the novel and the film version of it, which follows the original material almost verbatim. (To try and change the story would be to tamper needlessly with a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning book). I am no Oprah nut but she obviously had a deep respect and understanding for the story, which is evident in her surprisingly understated acting. Thandie Newton was simply amazing; I am glad I watched the film if for nothing else than the chance to see her performance (which, to be honest, has helped a key facet of the book make sense for me). The production design is flawless, and, as always, Jonathan Demme proves he's more than above average as a director. If you like pulp trash and want your movies dumb, loud, and shallow, avoid the movie version of Beloved. But if you're looking for a magnificently acted and gorgeously produced film, see this movie the first chance you get. I'm very glad I did.