Post by klep on Feb 6, 2017 7:58:20 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 2/6: Eve's Bayou
WEEK ONE OF BLACK FILM MONTH
"The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old."
It's not exactly the first line of Eve's Bayou, but it sure is a gripping one. It promises a dark, lurid tale. It promises a tragic loss of innocence and terrible, regretted decisions. You know the tale ends poorly, but you still have to see how it ends.
In the bayou, dark secrets are easily kept. The swamp drags them down into the murk and they lie there, hidden and festering. But if and when they are dredged up, it makes the revelation all the more horrible. In Eve's Bayou, young Eve (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is the one who discovers a secret, and it is one that eventually tears her family apart.
The secret Eve discovers is that her father Louis (Samuel L. Jackson) is cheating on her mother Roz (Lynn Whitfield). It's a revelation that sends her into shock, though her father is able to talk her down. Eve doesn't tell her mother, and her sister Cisely (Meagan Good) half-convinces her she was mistaken in what she saw. It's easier to believe a false memory than to face a horrible reality.
But while it's a comforting story, it's not the truth. Multiple times in the first few minutes we are given the idea of a true memory being ingrained in stark black and white, with no room for shades of misunderstanding or false interpretation: first as Eve tells us about indelible memories in voiceover, and moments later at a party Eve's beloved uncle's photographs are in black and white. But Cisely's scenario is color, and so we know it is false or at least questionable.
Kasi Lemmons uses black and white repeatedly through the film to assure us of the accuracy of Eve's Aunt Mozelle's (Debbi Morgan) visions (contrasted with a story she tells of her past), and so when a story returns to color late in the film we know it can't be trusted. But Eve doesn't have this advantage, and the consequences of her false certainty are terrible and tragic.
It would have been easy to shoot a tale this lurid like a noir, with all the harshness that implies. But while the film is dark and shadowy where appropriate, it's frequently comfortingly warm. Cinematographer Amy Vincent makes the bayou look summery and inviting, without the muggy oppressiveness that typically characterizes the swamp. But even in those bright inviting days you can find the darkness suggesting the doom encroaching on the family (Roger Ebert in his review accurately compared it to some of Bergman & Nykvist's collaborations). Because deny the truth or suppress your memory all you like, the truth will out, and it will bring a reckoning.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 2/13: Killer of Sheep
WEEK TWO OF BLACK FILM MONTH
The race came down to a tie between this and Beyond the Lights, but I wanted to make sure we got at least one older film in this month (this group understandably has a recency bias problem). It's a difficult film to watch as it's not streaming anywhere, but I think it's important sometimes to cover films that are more obscure. So join us next week for Charles Burnett's film about a man working at a slaughterhouse in Watts, Los Angeles.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for ?: The War Room
Hopefully we'll see the podcast crew return this week to finally cover this film and Weiner. I'll have a thread up the Wednesday the podcast returns for The War Room, available for rental on Amazon Video and Filmstruck's Criterion channel.
WEEK ONE OF BLACK FILM MONTH
"The summer I killed my father I was 10 years old."
It's not exactly the first line of Eve's Bayou, but it sure is a gripping one. It promises a dark, lurid tale. It promises a tragic loss of innocence and terrible, regretted decisions. You know the tale ends poorly, but you still have to see how it ends.
In the bayou, dark secrets are easily kept. The swamp drags them down into the murk and they lie there, hidden and festering. But if and when they are dredged up, it makes the revelation all the more horrible. In Eve's Bayou, young Eve (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) is the one who discovers a secret, and it is one that eventually tears her family apart.
The secret Eve discovers is that her father Louis (Samuel L. Jackson) is cheating on her mother Roz (Lynn Whitfield). It's a revelation that sends her into shock, though her father is able to talk her down. Eve doesn't tell her mother, and her sister Cisely (Meagan Good) half-convinces her she was mistaken in what she saw. It's easier to believe a false memory than to face a horrible reality.
But while it's a comforting story, it's not the truth. Multiple times in the first few minutes we are given the idea of a true memory being ingrained in stark black and white, with no room for shades of misunderstanding or false interpretation: first as Eve tells us about indelible memories in voiceover, and moments later at a party Eve's beloved uncle's photographs are in black and white. But Cisely's scenario is color, and so we know it is false or at least questionable.
Kasi Lemmons uses black and white repeatedly through the film to assure us of the accuracy of Eve's Aunt Mozelle's (Debbi Morgan) visions (contrasted with a story she tells of her past), and so when a story returns to color late in the film we know it can't be trusted. But Eve doesn't have this advantage, and the consequences of her false certainty are terrible and tragic.
It would have been easy to shoot a tale this lurid like a noir, with all the harshness that implies. But while the film is dark and shadowy where appropriate, it's frequently comfortingly warm. Cinematographer Amy Vincent makes the bayou look summery and inviting, without the muggy oppressiveness that typically characterizes the swamp. But even in those bright inviting days you can find the darkness suggesting the doom encroaching on the family (Roger Ebert in his review accurately compared it to some of Bergman & Nykvist's collaborations). Because deny the truth or suppress your memory all you like, the truth will out, and it will bring a reckoning.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 2/13: Killer of Sheep
WEEK TWO OF BLACK FILM MONTH
The race came down to a tie between this and Beyond the Lights, but I wanted to make sure we got at least one older film in this month (this group understandably has a recency bias problem). It's a difficult film to watch as it's not streaming anywhere, but I think it's important sometimes to cover films that are more obscure. So join us next week for Charles Burnett's film about a man working at a slaughterhouse in Watts, Los Angeles.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for ?: The War Room
Hopefully we'll see the podcast crew return this week to finally cover this film and Weiner. I'll have a thread up the Wednesday the podcast returns for The War Room, available for rental on Amazon Video and Filmstruck's Criterion channel.