Fences

Posted on December 22, 2016 at 5:43 pm

August Wilson’s towering play, the winner of the Tony and Pulitzer prizes, has been magnificently put on screen by director/star Denzel Washington, who won a Tony for the play’s 2012 Broadway revival, and who works with much of that show’s cast in this version.

Wilson’s own screenplay wisely avoids the usual impulse to “open up” a play by adding locations and reducing the dialogue. The best known of Wilson’s ten-play “Pittsburgh cycle,” one for each decade of the 20th century, “Fences” is a story of epic scope and mythic resonance. The gorgeous dialog makes poetry out of the kind of talk we hear around us all day: the jokes, mock insults, and bragging of co-workers and long-time friends, the intimate humor of a longtime couple, anguished confrontation, bitter recollection, back-and-forth that skims the surface while the emotions roil and explode below. To the extent that it preserves the artificiality of a theatrical performance, it emphasizes its ambitious reach. If a play has a character named Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson) who is cognitively impaired following a war injury, who carries a trumpet, and who constantly reminds his brother of a betrayal and survivor guilt, if the tile “Fences” is literal and metaphorical and the character building the fence talks about keeping out the actual angel of death, the audience must recognize these signals of serious, profound, dramatic engagement with eternal themes and be grateful for the chance to be a part of it.

Washington plays Troy, a garbageman who was once a star of a Negro Leagues baseball team but was too old to cross over into the Major Leagues the way Jackie Robinson did. He still keeps a bat and ball in the back yard. He still holds onto the bitterness and dashed dreams of his years as a player. But now, he just wants a promotion to driver, a job only held by white men where he works.

His wife is Rose (Oscar-winner Viola Davis, who also won a Tony for her performance in the revival). We first see Troy bragging to his best friend Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson) about how he laid down the law when he met Rose, telling her he was not interested in marriage. She laughs indulgently and affectionately, but makes it clear that it was quite the contrary. “I told him if he wasn’t the marrying kind, then move out the way so the marrying kind could find me.”

Troy and Rose have a son in high school, Cory (Jovan Adepo), a talented football player. Rose sees football as a chance for Cory to attend college, and Cory desperately wants to play. But Troy refuses, saying “The white man ain’t gonna let you get nowhere with that football noway.” His mind and spirit have been so constricted by what he has faced that he cannot bring himself to believe that real opportunity exists for Cory. Or perhaps he cannot face the possibility that Cory will do what he could not.

Troy also has an older son, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), with a woman he never married. Lyons, a musician, asks Troy for a loan, mostly as a way to find a way to talk to him, to find a way to see if he means anything to him. Troy tells him he should not need to ask for money, and Lyons responds, “If you wanted to change me, you should’ve been there when I was growing up.”

And Troy worries about his brother Gabriel, who lived with Troy and and Rose in a home they bought with his disability money, but who has moved down the street because he wants more independence. Troy feels guilty for not taking care of him, and for living in a house he would not have been able to afford but for his brother’s disability.

And so, he makes a bad decision that will shatter his family’s foundation. The scene where Davis goes from disbelief to shock to fury will be used for decades in acting class, but she is just as impressive in the movie’s final moments. While Troy occupies much of the screen time and dialogue, it is really Rose who is the heart of the story. Troy can brood, but cannot change. He can hurt, but he cannot heal. He is so damaged that he cannot offer his sons love or respect. But see Rose’s strength. Her resolve is not grounded in compromise or concession. Her soul has expanded to encompass all of life’s contradictions. And it is the great gift of this film that it expands ours, too.

Parents should know that this film includes themes of racism and adultery, some strong language, sexual references, and a sad death.

Family discussion: Do you agree with Rose’s choice? Why didn’t Troy want Cory to play football? What do we learn from Troy’s relationship with Gabriel?

If you like this, try: “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Desire Under the Elms”

Loving

Posted on November 10, 2016 at 5:21 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for thematic elements
Profanity:	Racist epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some alchohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Racism, some shoving, child hurt in accident
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	November 11, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	February 6, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01LTHZK2U

We don’t have to see how they met. We don’t have to see how he worked up the courage to ask her out or their first misunderstanding, or watch her try on different outfits before their big date. “Loving,” written and directed by Jeff Nichols (“Midnight Special,” “Mud”) brings us into the story of Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Oscar nominee Ruth Negga) as they have a very short, very simple, but very meaningful conversation. She pauses, and we can see on her face that she does not know how he will react and is perhaps afraid to hope. Finally, she says it: “I’m pregnant.”

There is a pause, only a few seconds but it feels much longer. Finally he says only, “That’s great.” But it is clear that he is overjoyed that their love has created a child and he is fully committed to her. And it is clear, too, that they are not fully aware of the ramifications of having a child when the mother is black, the father is white, and the Commonwealth of Virginia, which shut down its entire school system just four years earlier in response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, prohibits marriage or cohabitation between people of different races specifically because it does not want mixed-race children to be born.

Washington D.C. allows inter-racial marriage, so they are married there in 1958, and return home. One night the sheriff crashes into their home as they are sleeping in their bed, their marriage license on the wall, and arrests them. The judge suspends their sentence only if they will agree to leave the state and never return together.

They live with family in Washington, and raise three children. But Mildred wants to go home. Nichols conveys the Edenic quality of the countryside they love. The Civil Rights movement has begun, so she writes to Attorney General Robert Kennedy to ask for his help. He puts her in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union, a nonprofit that protects Constitutional rights. Two idealistic, if inexperienced, young lawyers (Nick Kroll and Jon Bass) want to take their case to the Supreme Court, which can invalidate all 16 state miscegenation laws.

Nichols keeps the legal stuff at the edges of the story. His focus is on the Lovings and their community, and the film is brimming with small, beautifully realized, evocative details. A dinner scene shows how completely Richard is accepted as a part of Mildred’s family. But we also see a frank conversation where a black man tells Richard that they may be alike, but Richard can “fix” his problem with the bigoted law by leaving Mildred while there is nothing they can do to “fix” theirs.

Richard’s mother, a midwife, only needs a few words to let Richard know that she did not give the police any information about where the Lovings were (and to let him know she was not entirely happy about the marriage, though she treats Mildred with kindness). We see a baleful glance from a defeated white competitor in a car race that could indicate the source of the complaint to the sheriff.

We see Richard’s careful, capable hands stirring mortar and laying concrete blocks and Mildred caring for the children and sitting at the kitchen table to write to the Attorney General. And, in a re-creation of the famous photo in LIFE Magazine by Grey Villet (a nice cameo by Nichols regular Michael Shannon), we see their quiet pleasure in each other as they laugh at the “Andy Griffith Show” episode about Aunt Bee’s pickles. He may need a lawyer to tell the nine old men on the Supreme Court he loves his wife. We see it in every frame.

Parents should know that this film depicts historic racism with some offensive epithets. The movie also includes a childbirth scene and an (off-screen) accident involving a child.

Family discussion: If you could take a case to the Supreme Court, what would it be? What do we learn about the Lovings from seeing them with their families?

If you like this, try: the documentary “The Loving Story”

Loving: The Real Story

Posted on November 9, 2016 at 8:00 am

“Loving,” opening across the country this week, is about the couple whose marriage became the Supreme Court case “Loving v. Virginia.” It is shocking today to think that it was not until 1967 that laws prohibiting marriage between people of different races were found unconstitutional. Today, there is a Supreme Court justice who is himself married to a woman of a different race.

Richard and Mildred Loving lived in a small Virginia community where the races mixed freely. Richard Loving was white and his father worked for a black man. Mildred herself was of mixed race, part black, part Native American, and probably part white as well. Virginia, which shut down the state’s school system for two years rather than follow the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and integrate the schools, was one of sixteen states to prohibit interracial marriage. The Virginia judge who upheld the law wrote:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The judge relied on an earlier court decision upholding miscegenation laws “to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,” and to prevent “the corruption of blood,” “a mongrel breed of citizens,” and “the obliteration of racial pride.”

The Lovings were married in the District of Columbia, which permitted interracial marriage, and then they returned to their home. Police broke in while they were asleep and arrested them.

They were banned from the state. The judge told them that if they returned, they would be arrested. So, they moved to Washington D.C. and raised their three children. But they wanted very much to return to their rural community.

Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy to ask for help, and his office referred her to the American Civil Liberties Union. Two young lawyers took the case. Ten years after they were arrested, their marriage made it possible for interracial couples — including President Obama’s parents — to be legally married.

The unanimous decision was stated in the strongest terms:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Later the Loving v. Virginia decision would be a significant precedent for the Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, making it possible for same-sex couples to be legally married.

The “Loving” movie, written and directed by Jeff Nichols, stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga. It is very much their story, with most of the legal issues and court appearances taking place off screen.

There is a superb documentary called The Loving Story. And TIME Magazine has a portfolio of the LIFE Magazine photos of the couple taken by the photographer played by Michael Shannon in the film.

When the lawyer asked Richard Loving what his message was for the Supreme Court, he said one sentence that was more powerful and eloquent than all the legal arguments: “Tell the judge I love my wife.”

Related Tags:

Race and Diversity The Real Story

Moonlight

Posted on October 27, 2016 at 5:33 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	NR (some sexuality, drug use, brief violence, and language throughout)
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drugs and drug dealing, alcohol, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Bullies, beating, disturbing images, sad offscreen death
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie, homophobia
Date Released to Theaters:	October 28, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	February 27, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01LTHZVM4

In the 2017 Oscar winner for Best Picture, a man tells a young boy a story, and, as with many stories adults tell children, especially in movies, it is a story with a purpose. Juan (Mahershala Ali) tells the boy derisively known as “Little” (Alex Hibbert) that when he was young, a woman saw him at night and told him that the silvery moonlight made his dark skin looked blue. She said he should be called Blue from then on. But, he tells Little, he wasn’t. “At some point you gotta decide for yourself who you gonna be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.”

In “Moonlight,” a film of a delicate, shimmering beauty that measures up to the title, the boy will struggle to make that decision for himself. Three chapters, as a child, a teenager and a young man, played by three different actors, are labeled with three different names that he is called: the taunting nickname Little, his birth certificate name Chiron (played by Ashton Sanders), and the nickname given to him by someone who had a profound impact on him, Black (played by Trevante Rhodes). Who will he decide to be?

The story begins in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami. Little runs from bullies and hides out in a crack house, where he is discovered by Juan, a kind-hearted drug dealer. Little won’t talk, so Juan takes him home, where his warmhearted significant other, Teresa (singer Janelle Monae) gives little some food and lets him stay the night. The next day, Juan brings Little back to his mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), a nurse who loves Little but leaves him alone much of the time. “He can take care of hisself. He good like that.”

In the second section, he is a skinny teenager all but abandoned by his mother, who has become addicted to drugs, and bullied at school. He still does not talk much, but he has one friend, Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), who calls him Black. Chiron cannot even acknowledge to himself that he wants more from Kevin, but one night on the beach, they share a piercingly sweet moment of tenderness that will indirectly lead to an act of violence.

When we see him again, he is a man, with an armor of muscle and gold teeth grillz, still almost silent, still almost isolated. But a call from Kevin inspires a journey.

The film is based on a play called “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” by McArthur awardee Tarell Alvin McCraney, who worked with director Barry Jenkins (the lovely romance “Medicine for Melancholy”) on adapting it for the screen. Both McCraney and Jenkins, like Little, had mothers who struggled with addiction, and Jenkins grew up on the Liberty City setting of the film.

The small miracle of the movie is the way it subverts the expectations the audience has based on news reports and many, many other movies. Every character is authentically complex. The graceful, poetic score by composer Nicholas Britell gives the story epic scope and heartbreaking intimacy.

We see Juan’s kindness and wisdom as he holds Little gently in the ocean, teaching him to swim and, more important, giving him an idea of what a man can be. We hear his thoughtful answer when Little asks him what “faggot” means. And yet, when Paula wants drugs, Juan supplies them, even knowing what it will do to Little. The confident, capable Kevin casually mentions time in prison as though it was an inevitable rite of passage. Little/Chiron/Black is physically transformed from chapter to chapter. We are continually challenged and confounded, yet held close to the heart of the story by its romantic lyricism and, most of all, the spacious humanity of its love for its characters.

Parents should know that this film includes very mature material: bullying, brutality, drug dealing and drug abuse, very strong language including homophobic slurs, sexual references and explicit sexual situations.

Family discussion: Why does the main character have a different name in each chapter? What do you think happened to Juan?

If you like this, try: “Medicine for Melancholy”

If You Ever Responded to #BlackLivesMatter with “All Lives Matter,” You Need to See “13th”

Posted on October 12, 2016 at 3:33 pm

Ava Duvernay’s new documentary, a nominee for the inaugural Critics Choice documentary award, is “13th,” named for the amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery — and, as this film shows, triggered racial injustice in other insidious, law-enabled ways. This is the movie that shows the strikingly different way that black Americans and white Americans interact with law enforcement and the prison system.

Related Tags:

Documentary Race and Diversity