Get Out

Since it was released to theaters in March of 2017, Get Out has been wowing audiences. I knew this was the sort of film full of surprises, so I made sure to avoid any spoilers until I was ready to see it and only knew how it was described to me: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner turned into a horror movie. That sums it up pretty well, but there is so much more to Get Out.

Writer and rookie director Jordan Peele has created here is a film full of rich symbolism about 21st century racism. While the big R word can scare some people away, don’t let it deter you. The racism in this film lingers in the air like humidity making the characters sweat. Is this feeling of dread just the socially awkward bumps in the road or something more sinister? Using this idea, the film becomes very entertaining and wonderfully suspenseful.

The opening scene sets the tone for this film quickly. We see a young black man walking down a suburban neighborhood sidewalk. He’s talking on his phone about how out of place he feels there. As soon as he hangs up, a white car starts following him, it is obvious. The young man turns around, not wanting to cause any trouble and a few seconds later, a man puts him in a headlock and throws him in the back of the car. It all happens so quickly, it comes as a shock. But the message is clear: simply being black in a white neighborhood is dangerous.

The cast sets up the premise quickly. We have our star, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a photographer who is about to go out of town with his white girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), to meet her family. His friend, and bit of comic relief, Rod (LilRel Howery) , is watching his dog. Rose’s family live in a beautiful house on a secluded lake and her parents both seem like picture of progressive, educated upper class white folk. Rose’s father gushes over Obama, seems like the thing to say to his daughter’s black boyfriend, right?

It turns out, this weekend is the annual big party the family throws, just like Rose’s late grandparents did. What was already a awkward weekend for Chris looks like it’s about to be cranked up to ten, and then a serious turn takes this story from stressful to downright scary. I dare not ruin such a perfect movie moment.

Another early scene that becomes full of symbolism is when Rose and Chris hit a deer while driving to the parents’ home. First of all, dead animals are a huge bad omen and often show up in the start of horror movies, but this one holds a lot more weight than the dead armadillo from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Chris goes to check on the deer, while Rose is more concerned with the car. It’s a doe, dying on the side of the road. Later, we see how this mirrors a painful memory for Chris that he reveals in a weak moment,  just before the big turn of the story.

Get Out is nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture. Jordan Peele has earned his first nomination for best director, for the first feature film he has ever directed! Daniel Kaluuya is nominated for lead actor for his spellbinding performance that drives this film. Get Out is also nominated for original screenplay, also written by Peele.

There is so much I want to discuss about this movie, but so much that I don’t want to spoil. Honestly, seeing Get Out spoiler free makes it so amazing, you will never see some of these twists coming. I imagine just being black in a room full of rich white people can be scary, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Get Out is a horror film that feels fresh and suspenseful until the very end. You don’t want to miss out.

“Oh, white girls. They get you every time.”

The Help

I try to avoid other opinions of a movie until I have seen it myself, but it is much harder to avoid the advertisements.  By just glancing at commercials and posters for The Help, I got the idea that it would be a slightly quirky film about women, for women with some laughs and a lesson about racism.  When I finally saw it, I was shocked at what a great movie it was.  The drama and issues brought up were a lot heavier than that yellow poster can let on.

The film is set in Jackson Mississippi in the 1960s.  When Skeeter (Emma Stone), an aspiring writer, returns home from college, she notices more and more tension between white women and their black hired help.  She can tell that her ill mother (Allison Janney) is lying about their old maid, Constantine (Cicely Tyson), who raised Skeeter.  The girls she grew up with are all now married with their own help and finding new ways to deal with “the colored situation.”  Not realizing the full danger at first, Skeeter tries to recruit the black maids to provide testimonials about what it is like to work for these white women.  As Skeeter gets deeper into writing the book, racial tensions rise across Jackson, and the country.

The strongest things in this film are the acting, variety of full bodied characters and how they fit together.  Viola Davis provides a strong lead as Aibileen.  As an older woman, who has raised many white children, but hardly had time for her only son, now dead, she has become bitter.  That bitterness and loss helps her find the strength to tell her story to Skeeter.  Viola’s best friend is Minny (Octavia Spencer), a bold maid whose sassy mouth and defiant attitude gets her fired by Hilly Holbrook.  Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the queen bee of the white young women in Jackson.  What Hilly does, the rest do, which includes adding new outside toilets for the help, believing in racist propaganda about disease carried by black people, and shunning Celia Foote.  Celia (Jessica Chastain) is a sweet, ditzie young woman who lives outside of Jackson, whom all the white women think is white trash.  When she hires Minny as her first maid, boundaries are broken and big secrets are revealed.

There is a funny thing I have noticed about The Help, that I am not sure if it hinders or hurts the main idea about how real racism was within homes in the 1960s.  When characters like Hilly talk about ideas that the audience knows are backwards and outwardly racist, we tend to laugh at how absurd these women sound.  Thing is, Hilly is completely serious about “the colored situation” and other ignorant ideas.  To some degree I feel like she is being a comic character, a bit like George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove.  When she says, “They carry different diseases than we do. That’s why I’ve drafted the Home Health Sanitation Initiative.” we could compare it to when Scott says, “Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”  On some level, that works fine since we are in a future perspective where her traits are laughable.  We clearly hear something that can be funny, but other characters in the film may not.  And later, some of the things that happen to Hilly are outright hilarious, so much so that I do not want to spoil the fun.  While we see Hilly as comical, she is still an obvious threat to our heroines.  Laughing at a villain can be a dangerous thing to do in film.

The Help is nominated for four Oscars.  Of those, three of them are well deserved acting nominations for Viola Davis for Lead Actress, Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain for Supporting Actress.   The other is for Best Picture.

I have seen The Help twice, simply because I enjoyed it so much the first time I knew I needed to see it again.  All the acting is wonderful, the whole cast creates a great ensemble.  While this is mainly a drama focusing on heavy racial issues from a perspective many of us may not have considered before, there are some wildly funny moments that help lighten the whole film.  And in the end, it feels like an inspiring film full of bravery and a heart of gold, without getting at all sappy.

“Minny don’t burn fried chicken.”

If the Academy wants to award a film with a perfect blend of drama, laughs and uplifting revolution, The Help will win the Oscar for Best Picture.

A Soldier’s Story

Analyzing A Soldier’s Story brings me back to my college days where I took a course entitled Black Drama, where we discussed plays by and about African-Americans.  After watching this film, I honestly wished we would have discussed the play it is based off of, Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play.  The work is electric with racial stereotypes and motives that would have sent my class into a week of compelling conversation.

Directed by Norman Jewison, A Soldier’s Story is set up as a murder mystery and reveals to be a portrait of self loathing racism by the end.  On an army base full of black soldiers, led by white officers in 1944 Louisiana, Sergeant Waters (Adolph Caesar) is murdered and an officer from Washington, Captain Davenport (Howard E. Rollins Jr.), is called in to investigate.  The fact that Davenport is black makes all the difference.  No one on the base has ever seen a black officer, bringing a new sense of pride to the black soldiers.  At first, all motives lead to the local Klan or white bigoted officers on base and the idea that he plans on questioning and possibly arresting the racist white men in town  is not settling well.

As he questions the different characters, mostly men from Waters’ troop, we are shown flashbacks that reveal more and more of Waters’ true character.  He was a small, light-skinned black man with a lot of ambition and hatred towards southern black men who, in his perspective, conform to racial stereotypes.  He singles out CJ Memphis (Larry Riley) from his troop, calling him “a clown in blackface” because of his laid-back attitude, southern dialect and bluesy musical talents.  Waters presses his hatred against CJ until he retaliates, which brings serious consequences.

All in all, A Soldier’s Story is a compelling film, but while it’s smart and thought provoking, it seems to be constrained by the idea and structure of a murder-mystery.  What this film is really discovering is an underlying racism within these African-American characters against themselves and the murder-mystery is here just to draw in and keep all races interested.

“Something’s wrong, ain’t it, sir?  I mean, those Klan boys, they can’t stand to see us in these uniforms.  They usually take the stripes and stuff off before they lynch us.”

Places in the Heart

In the middle of the depression, Edna (Sally Field) and her family seem to be one of the few lucky people in a small Texas town still living comfortably on a steady income, until her husband is accidentally killed by a drunk black man.  Suddenly, after years of only doing housework and raising kids, Edna must find a way to provide for her two small children and keep the bank from buying the house.  When a wandering black man, Moze (Danny Glover), who can do nothing but beg for work and food in the racist south, suggests that he help Edna turn her land into a cotton farm.  Seeing no other option that can keep her and the kids together, she becomes the face and Moze the know-how to running a cotton farm.  Along the way, Mr. Denby (Lane Smith) from the bank does, what he calls the Christian thing, and gives her his blind brother-in-law, Will (John Malkovich), as a paying tenant in her house.  Edna, Moze and Will become like family through hardships and tragedies to make the cotton farm a success.

One of the first obstacles that Edna and her gang face is a destructive tornado.  These scenes can be heart pounding and suspenseful for even the most seasoned storm chaser in tornado alley.  Between the daughter, Possum (Gennie James) playing alone in an upstairs room where a tree blows the wall in, and the son, Frank (Yankton Hatten), running from school across town with the tornado quickly approaching, we’re scared to think of the fate of Edna’s family.  Thankfully, both Will and Moze have formed an attachment to the kids enough to help ensure their safety, even by putting their own in danger.  The images of the aftermath of the storm are haunting and devastating, for me, they only echo the recent events in Alabama in Missouri.

Basically, the film is a sum of all my worst fears.  Becoming a widow with young kids and no work experience outside the home to make an income off of sounds like one of the worst predicaments I can imagine.  Of course, the time period set in the midst of the depression is just a double whammy.  And then the tornadoes seems like extra icing on the already decked out cake.

Even with all these fears helping me sympathize and identify with Edna and her lovable outcast gang, I didn’t find Places in the Heart to be anything of extra special significance.  I have no real complaints about the film, the acting was great all around and the story kept me intrigued from beginning to end.  Yet, there was just some spark of greatness that I’ve come to expect from most of these Best Picture nominees.  It’s always a little disappointing when just that one last element is missing.

“Peace of God.”

To Kill a Mockingbird

Most American high schools require their students to read Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, at some point.  Unfortunately, forcing literature onto a teenager doesn’t always encourage them to open their mind to it’s ideas.  Thankfully, I had Mrs. Essex that semester.  She led us into eye opening discussions about the novel and it’s fragile themes.  It was probably the first time I was within an honest and intelligent conversation about racism, sexual violence or childhood influences.  Of all the literature I was exposed to in my teens, this became one of my favorites and the most thought provoking.

The story takes place in an Alabama town during the depression.  Atticus (Gregory Peck) is the town’s lawyer, he’ll take any honest case and will accept payment in simple ways for people who are poor.  He’s a widower and father of two children, ten-year-old Jem (Phillip Alford) and six-year-old tomboy Scout (Mary Badham).  Jem, Scout and their friend Dill (John Megna) keep themselves busy just being curious kids around the neighborhood and fueling their imaginations with discoveries about the legendary Radley house.  When Atticus defends a local black man who has been accused of raping a white woman, Jem and Scout have many hard questions to ask and they witness their father stand against the crowd and do what is right.

In the film, we see that kids are just kids, but it’s what the adults around them do and say that form their senses and understanding of the world.  Perhaps it’s the lack of a strong female presence in Scout’s life that influences her tomboy ways, but Atticus is the perfect role model for her and Jem.  They’re lucky to have him, on the other end of the parental spectrum is the town drunk, Mr. Ewell (James Anderson).  He claims that his eighteen year old daughter, Mayella (Collin Wilcox), was raped and beaten by Tom Robinson (Brock Peters).  After the courtroom scene, it’s obvious who the real culprit is and how much Mr. Ewell has wronged his daughter throughout her life.

One of the greatest scenes is when Atticus is protecting Tom from the lynch mob.  Atticus is on the porch of the jail prepared to stand his ground, but hopes to do so peacefully.  When the mob arrives, mostly made up of poor, chubby farmers, Scout and Jem rush through the crowd to their father.  These men aren’t going to get violent with children around, right?  Then Scout takes her innocence to a new level and tries to have a friendly conversation with Mr. Cunningham, whom Atticus has helped in court before.  The shame on his face, from being picked out as a good man by a little girl when he has the intentions of killing a man is amazing and so moving.

I cannot go on enough about Gregory Peck’s Oscar winning performance as Atticus Finch.  He upholds the feelings the character evokes in the novel perfectly.  Atticus is the father everyone wants to have in some way.  He’s smart, never raises his voice, teaches his children well, both educationally and morally.  When Jem or Scout ask him tough questions, Atticus always knows what to say without sugarcoating the truth.  He’s as respectful to children as his is to adults, and in return earns their respect.  The AFI named Peck’s Atticus as the top screen hero in past hundred years.  That’s quite an honor for a character who might sum himself up as simply a father and a lawyer.

Everyone, especially parents, should see (and read) To Kill a Mockingbird.  Kids will be intrigued by Jem and Scouts adventures, but should have an adult on hand for tough questions about a certain word.  If you ever need a coach to help you explain things to little ones, just remember that Atticus is a role model for every child to look up to and all parents to emulate.

“There just didn’t seem to be anyone or anything Atticus couldn’t explain. Though it wasn’t a talent that would arouse the admiration of any of our friends, Jem and I had to admit he was very good at that – but that was all he was good at… we thought.”

Crash

Before I saw this film in its entirety, I had a few small encounters with it.  Let’s call them crashes.  The first was when this was in theaters, I was a lowly employee sweeping up popcorn that day when someone stopped me and asked me what “this Crash movie” was about.  I hadn’t heard much of anything about it, it just showed up at our theater and I had read something about people in LA and it had Brendan Fraser in it.  So that’s what I told him, not the best word of mouth for the future Best Picture winner.  Months later, in my college dorm, my roommate and I flipped channels to the campus movie network to land in the middle of the upside down car crash scene of the film.  With no knowledge of prior events in the film, we started yelling at the lady who wouldn’t let the cop help her and when things only got worse, we only got more vocal.  After seeing just that scene, my roommate decided to buy Crash on DVD so we could finally see the whole thing.  I only wish I had made the purchase.

So, to finally have an answer to that guy at the theater, what is this Crash movie about?  It’s a multiple story line film, where all the different characters have their own stuff to deal with and they’re all interconnected (crashed together) in some way.  Rick (Brendan Fraser) is the district attorney, he’s married to Jean (Sandra Bullock) who’s your pampered housewife ordering her cleaning lady around.  They get carjacked by two young black men, Anthony (Ludacris) who is constantly making racist theories and then living them out and Peter (Larenz Tate) who’s older brother is a detective.  Daniel is a Hispanic locksmith with a young daughter who changes the locks for Bullock and Farhad, a Persian immigrant, who has just bought a gun to protect his store.  Cameron is a black television director pulled over by racist cop John (Matt Dillon) who proceeds to molest his wife.  John’s young partner Tom now wants to patrol solo.  You got all that?

In case you didn’t notice, there were many races all in that mix.  You’ll notice plenty in the film.  Racism is one of the main themes that carries through the entire film.  But it isn’t simply fueling racism, it just shows you what it assumes you’ve already know and shows you how it fuels all the terrible events of the film.  It seems that everyone has their own personal hardships to deal with and the racism flows out to help them release their tensions (Bullock angry about being carjacked and doesn’t want a Hispanic man, she presumes to be in a gang, changing the lock.) but only fuels the rage of those around them.  It’s a circle of frustration that becomes hate that turns into violence and eventually will kill people.

Seeing this film always brings back memories of a class I took: Black Drama.  It was an English credit and classified as my cultural credit, and I guessed that we would read plays by African Americans, which was all true.  What I didn’t expect was to walk into class everyday guilty of being white.  That class brought up racism in ways I had never dreamed of and only expanded the stereotypes I knew.  Besides the general expansion of literature, I don’t think I really learned anything good in that class.  I knew racism was alive and well before that, no one needs to take a class on it.  I guess what I want to link between my class experience and the film is, Crash is more eye opening and understanding about how racism lives today that that entire semester.  Not to diss my former Professor or classmates, but they just don’t get their point across as well.

One of the things that makes this film so amazing, isn’t it’s dripping racism.  Let’s forget about that for a paragraph.  See that image just above, with the guy crying out?  There are some gripping emotional moments in this film where everything is frantically on the verge of destruction.  That moment my roommate and I were yelling at before?  Absolutely astounding.  The way the action builds up and the tension between the characters and everything near the brink of explosion, director Paul Haggis handles it like a master, milking our emotions and seeing the big picture.  That’s what really makes this a film to see and experience.

So who would like Crash?  First off, you’ve got to be thick skinned to the N-word and most other racial slurs.  I also think this movie needs to be approached with an open mind, where you can try to understand each characters situation more.  In the end, this is a great film.  The messages are clear, the acting is wonderful and the film gets those rusty gears in your head moving in new ways.  I completely recommend Crash.

“They think we’re Arab. When did Persian become Arab?”