laursene

This one got lost somehow in the years between School Daze and Dear White People, but it's well worth rediscovering. Multi-story structure played out by a fine ensemble cast is perhaps a bit too schematic and tries to do a bit too much, but Singleton brings the same empathy he displayed in Boyz in the Hood (and a welcome returning cast member, Ice Cube) to Higher Learning. Plus, his filmmaking smarts have improved, if anything, as several very well thought-through sequences demonstrate (particularly the melded-together love-making episode). What Singleton accomplishes, very movingly, is to convey the struggles that college-age people have figuring out who they are and what they are here for. The pain of being midway between adulthood and adulthood itself is always right there on the surface -- especially for the black characters, of course, since they are adjusting to a world much more directly controlled by the white man than they had previously experienced, but for the white characters too, one most tragically. Higher Learning accomplishes this at least as well as the two films mentioned earlier. Biggest asset: Omar Epps. His performance as Malik has a depth and emotional weight that goes beyond the rest of the cast (who are all just fine) and makes clear how much is at stake for him -- and everybody -- in the drama of college.

Some fine moments, but overall doesn't hang together. However, the t-shirt dance (which I take it started out as part of a performance piece) conjured the sort of eeriness David Lynch achieved in some of his early films (before they turned all forced and self-conscious). The strangeness and physicality of it transcended the rest of the movie and, perhaps unfortunately, showed up what it was lacking. But it's one of the best film presentations (lighting, music, camera) of a "live" performance I've seen. Also reminded me a bit of the wonderful scene in "Chuck and Buck" in which Buck seduces his old friend in a bar. Are we nothing but human? Are we not also something else?