Toni Morrison story about a former servant in post-Civil War Ohio who, while working as a cook and living with her troubled teenage daughter (in a house touched by a spirit from the past), is visited by a man she once knew 18 years ago when she was a troubled girl from Kentucky. They forge a loving friendship built upon their memories, but the horrors of their youth sneak back into the yard once a wild child named Beloved shows up and is taken in. Fill-in-the-blanks melodrama moves along fluidly, yet intrinsically keeps tripping itself up. Director Jonathan Demme wants the overstuffed tale to unfold slowly, but by explaining so little about the central characters he risks alienating his audience. Within the first few minutes, Demme employs a technical effect which looks (and plays) cheap, followed by an outpouring of sorrowful family anger which gets the first act off on the wrong foot. The narrative is, in fact, so fuzzy that we're not sure who Oprah Winfrey's character is, how she makes her living, or what her relationship is with her daughter (who appears disturbed). When the stranger Beloved is readily welcomed by Winfrey into the home, talking in a staccato sing-song, we're not told why. Demme seems to think the mood music and the haunted/loving expression on Winfrey's face will tell us what we need to know, but this backfires (the film is practically intent on shutting out logic, replacing it with soul-bearing emotion). Perhaps in an attempt to retain Morrison's prose, the screenwriters don't allow these people to have normal conversations (it's all steeped in the hypothetical). "Beloved" has an interesting pictorial look, although the cinematography by Tak Fujimoto is too clear and pristine (as it was also, for example, in "The Color Purple", shot by Allen Daviau), and the tidy yards and weathered rooms look too Hollywood. Demme darts around avoiding explanations, while Thandie Newton's Beloved skitters about like a banshee. Winfrey, who also co-produced, gives an uneven performance hindered by the dialogue; her lack of sparkle reminds us she can be a gravely intelligent presence, but her solemn looks of longing don't register anything intriguing (we're supposed to be drawn to this woman because of Winfrey's personality, I assume, yet with Oprah so subdued we're left with nothing but a skin-deep portrait). It's a misbegotten venture. With hurting eyes rimmed with tears, mouths torn by grief, and hands grasping and clutching at the air, "Beloved" whips up quite a tempest, yet it's mostly hot air. ** from ****
Review of Beloved
