Beloved Review
by Susan Granger (Ssg722 AT aol DOT com)October 12th, 1998
Susan Granger's review of "BELOVED" (Touchstone Pictures)
Leave it to the resourceful Oprah Winfrey to insure that at least three, perhaps four, fine black actors will get Academy Award nominations this year. In this adaptation of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the devastating effects of slavery on an African-American family, directed by Jonathan Demme ("Philadelphia"), Oprah personifies terror and truth as Sethe, a former slave raising her teenage daughter (Kimberly Elise) in rural Ohio circa 1873. She's haunted by the horrors of her past and the ghost of her murdered baby, plus the way the rest of her family (husband, two sons) have abandoned her. After drifting around since emancipation, another former slave (Danny Glover) shows up on her doorstep. They share a common birthplace: a plantation called Sweet Home in Kentucky - except "It wasn't sweet and it wasn't home." Then a strange, wild young woman (Thandie Newton) appears. Covered with slime and filth, and talking like the devil in "The Exorcist," she says her name is "Beloved." Gradually, through flashbacks, the tortuous, interweaving background story of these characters evolves. Like "Amistad" and "Rosewood," it reveals the terrible truth about black history, prejudice, and man's inhumanity to man. Unlike "The Color Purple," however, the audience is kept emotionally distant. Perhaps that's because the serious, intelligent and deeply disturbing script is an assemblage of three writers: Akosua Busia (soon-to-be ex-wife of director John Singleton), Richard LaGravenese ("Bridges of Madison County"), and Adam Brooks ("French Kiss"). On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Beloved" is a stately, artistically admirable 9 - but recommended only for those who are willing to undergo three long, stolid hours of unrelenting misery.
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