HOT BUTTA N AWL, YAW! PRAISE THE LAWD! I GOT THE SHUGAS! (Sorry, I watched SNL and they were satirizing Paula Deen, I couldn’t help from laughing; not to mention their Japanese rendition… Hilarious!)
Aw, the poor dog in the beginning of the movie… he was thrown and beaten by the ghost of Beloved. Then Sethe had to push his eyeball back inside his socket and fix his dislocated leg. Just as Amy Denver said later in the movie, “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” I thought setting the movie with the tombstone first then the violent, crazy scene was powerful. It would have left its audience bewildered and perplexed and even more, when Howard and Buglar ran away. Imagine being a mother and having your children run away from you, especially considering what Sethe already has endured. It must be heartbreaking even for the audience.
The movie was certainly more traumatizing, for lack of better words. Reading the book, you can only imagine the scenes. But watching the movie… the scenes were not as pleasant as my imagination. Besides, who would imagine something so disturbing to themselves? I wondered greatly how Oprah felt playing the role of Sethe considering her childhood. If I recall correctly, (and I double checked on Wikipedia) she was molested by her cousin, uncle, and family friend when she was nine and the death of her baby son at 14. She even went to say that “she had chosen not to be mother because she had not been mothered well.” Her character resonates with her very well. Maybe that’s why Oprah got the role and played it well. It also resonates with the book in real life because rather than trying to forget the past, Oprah chose to play as Sethe knowingly; therefore Oprah was embracing her real past as painful as it was. If she chose to forget her past, she wouldn’t have chosen the role. I can only empathize so much every time I see Sethe get violated by the schoolteacher and his nephews and touched by Paul D knowing that Oprah is the vessel. Ultimately, this is probably why she got the role in the first place. And in ‘The Color Purple.’ She would’ve fit right in in the ‘The Help.’ I should really google about Oprah’s view when she chose to play Sethe… but so lazy.
There was very little sex in the movie as there was so much in the book. In retrospect, I didn’t think the act of sexual intercourse played a significant role for both medias. However, while the book was explicit about it, maybe the director felt that it was unnecessary for the movie. Maybe the rating was going to be even more restricted and therefore, less audience. In my opinion, it didn’t matter because it was implied just as many movies are: they go to bed naked, fondle around, and you know what’s going to happens next then sunshine! Besides, I felt the pseudo-sex scenes in the movie were very unnatural and disturbing. It felt painful to Oprah, I meant Sethe. It wasn’t graceful like in other movies. They certainly followed the scene with Paul D cupping her breasts with a horrific ghost showdown, I don’t remember that. Didn’t they have sex soon after they reunited? They slept without having sex? They still had clothes on on the bed.
Speaking of that scene, this movie was… limited third-person? Well, it certainly was third-person in regards to vantage point. Unlike the book, we never actually get to hear the characters’ thoughts. I was looking forward to Oprah speaking in her mind while Paul D was staring at her chokecherry tree. No emerald closet for Denver.
Again, the movie, overall, was disturbing. Especially with the arrival of Beloved. She slept in the woods in the dark wearing all black and woke up with bugs crawling all over her! I’m already scared walking around the woods when I go camping with the thought that thousands of bugs are crawling on the floor right now, all over my tent! Wasn’t she dressed in white in the book? Oh, I loved the archetype of colors! She wore black with bugs crawling all over her and when the family saw her, bugs were buzzing around her. Disturbing scene again. Black is associated with death, negativity, impending doom – everything Beloved will soon become. The buzzing the bugs resembles flies attracted by a rotting carcass, what Beloved actually is.
The carnival scene was probably one of my two favorite scenes, the other being when Sethe purchases cloth for sewing and sweets and bam! Happiest scene in the movie. And you know what both of them have in common? Colors. So many vibrant, beautiful colors. However, I felt the carnival scene was being satirical of human nature. And it’s certainly me projecting my view and blowing a simple scene up. Yes, I can finally identify satire and irony (to a degree). The carnival had the noticeably, weird people on display – the fat woman, rubber man, and more. The black, whose plight is obvious and still is, poke fun at them. So what does it mean to human? They were dehumanized and yet they dehumanize others. This circumvention of hypocrisy is appalling. We never cease to criticize other people do we?
Beloved was not who I imagined her to be. I perceived her as this graceful vixen with the disposition of an innocent child. What came to mind watching the movie, however, was a mentally disabled child. She is not gracefully as I thought. She was more… disgusting with the constant snoring and child behavior. I don’t recall her snoring in the book nor wetting herself, and if so, very vaguely.
I particularly liked the visage of the perfect happy family in the beginning, what Sethe and blacks overall deserved. What it should have been. But for the audience, and particular, the readers, the dark truth was veiled by the façade of a perfect family. Or thematically, that the seemingly perfect family hides or has a dark secret.
So what does it mean to be human for Denver and Sethe? Denver has the duties of a daughter and Sether has the duties of a mother and having to live the ramifications of the rather impulsive decision she made. The impulsiveness to kill your own children under the pretense that dying was preferred to suffering. The schoolteacher cried and called Sethe an animal. Was it because his can no longer ‘experiment’ on her? Lost his test subjects? Or because of what it means to be human? That despite his dehumanizing demeanor, he could empathize with the innocent death of a child, one that he was indirectly responsible for? It was also interesting, from a scientific point of view, how blacks learned English from acclamation and inherited the values of Christianity, effectively losing most, if not all, of their native ancestry completely.
The paradigm shift was weird. It wasn’t as extreme as the book depicted. Sethe was still effectively in the mother role and Beloved, the child albeit pregnant.
The end was amusing. Denver had an attitude with Paul D! She rachet (it’s a tennis inside joke, I suppose). I liked the adaptation of the novel; it provided a starker contrast than the one I initially had. Yeah, it could have been better, but this would suffice. To each their own, right? There were obviously very many significant, pivotal scenes in the book that were not interpreted and already the film was two hours and fourty-four minutes. Anyways, its difficult criticizing the movie with knowledge of the book. The movie, in a way, complements the book visually. The movie alone, however, would have been lackluster because I would have thought “What did I just watch?” without knowledge of the book due to its superficiality.
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