Harriet Cert: 12A / 126 mins / Dir. Kasi Lemmons / Trailer
To the awkward past now with Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet, a biopic of Harriet Tubman who escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and went on to rescue around 70 others before serving in the American Civil War.
Cynthia Erivo leads in the title role, and indeed goes on to carry the whole film. The problem being that the rest of the cast aren't quite as good, so Erivo ends up doing all the heavy-lifting. And while she's capable enough to pull that off, the resulting film is uneven. The pacing is also all over the shop, and I must confess to clock-watching when the end didn’t appear to be in sight.
Harriet’s first group-rescue is a lengthy and tense affair, but the fact that it takes place after an hour, in the dark and is by necessity conducted as quietly as possible lends the sequence a soporific quality, which I’m pretty certain is not intentional. Lemmons seems to be stronger in the quiet, more reflective moments than the scenes of high drama. Overall it’s competently made, but the Q4 release date whispers ‘awards-bait’ a little too loudly.
Despite the heavy subject-matter, I found Harriet more educational than emotionally engaging. And that’s fine, but if I want enlightenment, I’ll watch a documentary. The film is about more than dates and markers of course, and even more than about freedom, it’s about hope. And while I can be snarky about the month in which Harriet lands, I can’t deny the overall need for this.
Oh, and am I the only one who kept getting distracted every time Terence Blanchard's score kept segueing into the opening fanfare of Goldfinger?
Okay, it's not as good as 12 Years A Slave (what is?), but Harriet is a step above Free State Of Jones, even though all three would sit on the same shelf anyway..
Only for the cinematography, tonally this is more a Sunday-night-in.
It is, as above.
Probably not, if only because Cynthia Erivo is fantastic in everything.
That's possible.
There isn't.
Fair.
Level 2: Clarke Peters is in this, and he was in Three Billboards along with Woody 'Beckett' Harrelson.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Oh, it may be February but we're not done with the historical socio-political drama just yet, thanks. Squeezing in before the awards-crush comes Hidden Figures, the largely true story of NASA's boundary-defying resource pooling, in an attempt to get a man into space before Russia. Even though they didn't. That's not a spoiler. But that's not what the film's about, anyway.
Short version: It's a good film.
That said… what you see in the trailer*1is pretty much exactly what you get. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the film holds no real surprises.
On the plus-side, the film's subject matter (both thematic and practical) is accessible enough for all audiences, although I often felt it was being a little too simplistic. The film has a borderline kitsch quality that regularly sits at odds with the drama. Not for the first time recently, I found myself squirming slightly, not with liberal-guilt but thinking "why aren't you more angry about this?". Even with the film's PG rating, Hidden Figures can't (indeed doesn't) ignore the racial tensions that make up the central dramatic thread. But they're treated in a way which almost becomes secondary to the story, somehow. The film often feels like it can't choose between being about the civil rights movement, the space-race or plain old-fashioned misogyny. And it shouldn't have to choose, because the story itself is about all three. Sadly, Allison Schroeder and Theodore Melfi's screenplay spins these plates unevenly, and not without condescension at times. The main problem is that the deeper the screenplay digs with the 'boo-hiss' pantomime theatrics surrounding racial politics of the early 1960s, the harder it's going to be to convincingly climb out of that hole in Act Three*2.
But despite my furrowed brow the film pulls the whole thing off rather well, although that's thanks to the cast, more than anything. Taraji Henson, Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer outshine everyone else (rightfully so) as the trio of mathematical genii, even though their screen-time is split somewhat unevenly. Kevin Costner just about earns a pass as one of the most inefficient, if well-meaning, middle-managers you've ever seen, and everyone else is slightly too one-dimensional to be of any use.
Hidden Figures didn't blow me away, but it's a good film. Then again, I'm left thinking that it'd be pretty difficult to make a bad one out of a story this great.
That said... In the 'it looks like you're losing your job to a computer' scene near the end of the movie, both Katherine and Al are wearing glasses which have an anti-glare coating, catching the light in the room with a green and purple reflective sheen. Even assuming that such coatings were commonplace in prescription glasses in 1962, neither of them were working with VDU screens. That's very much the point of the entire dialogue, here. So they wouldn't be wearing those, now would they?
I hope the film's engineering and mathematics advisors put in more effort than the wardrobe department…
The film's got a similar sort of vibe to The Help.
Although even that feelgood tale got angry when it needed to.
It won't spoil your enjoyment of the film if you only manage to catch it on DVD.
It does.
In the nicest possible way, no.
It'll depend very much on why we're disagreeing.
There isn't.
Level 2: This film's got Octavia Spencer in it, and she performed voice-work in Zootropolis/Zootopia, alongside Alan 'K-2SO' Tudyk.
*1 Although while I'm on, I have to say that Costner's line in the trailer, "math that doesn't exist yet" has annoyed the living fuck out of me for weeks, now. Leaving aside his use of a singular when it's clearly a plural, the mathematics Kevin - much like physics - exists whether you know about it or not. It's how things work, everywhere. What you mean is "I need maths that hasn't yet been discovered / refined / adapted". Are you really in charge here, Kevin? No wonder the Russians are waltzing into first place. Thankfully, there is a scene in the film where Taraji Henson's Katherine bitch-slaps the chewing gum out of Kevin's hand and points out that the formulae they need is in fact "really old" (Jim Parsons' character actually says this). But at no point does Kevin hand in his security pass with a thousand lines saying "I will not try and invent mathematics". Stick to being Robin Hood, pal. [ BACK ]
*2 The best line in this category comes late on, when Octavia Spencer's Dorothy passes a hand-towel to Kirsten Dunst's Vivian in the newly anointed mixed-race bathroom. In doing so, they briefly brush hands, causing them both to pause. Vivian looks up ruefully and says "Y'know Dorothy… despite what you may think, I have nothing against y'all. It's just the simplistic and heavy-handed way my composite character's been written in the screenplay for the last 80 pages." Although half of that quote may be subtext, admittedly. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well, this is a slightly awkward. I went to see the new writer/director Barry Jenkins flick, Moonight, yesterday. As a three-chaptered story of internal, social and sexual identity, it's pretty great. I just don't have that much to say about it.
And it's not that I don't know how to respond to the film, more that my response is a sort of quiet contemplation. Three segments follow the central character, Chiron, as a child, teenager and adult, through the gang and drug culture of Miami's urban sprawl. And among the domestic struggles we've seen so often over the years in these settings, Chiron thinks from an early age that he might be gay. The film is about how Chiron comes to terms with that, and Jenkins uses quiet introspection where others have used righteousness and rage. This is a calm film about turbulent times. That said, it wasn't as overtly impactful as I'd expected which caught me off guard, but at the same time it wasn't all melodramatic hand-wringing either. Issues are addressed but never resolved neatly, and the film's central subject-matter isn't its sole focus. Yet this borderline reluctance to fit neatly into a standard cinematic box saw me willing the story forward, while at the same time wishing each section was significantly longer and more involved. Maybe I'd have preferred it as three one-hour TV episodes?
Moonlight features solid turns all round under Jenkins' stoic direction, but the standout performances come from Ashton Sanders as the teenage Chiron, and Naomie Harris as his drug-addicted mother (in all three segments). Although at the same time, I want to take points off for the needlessly distracting hand-held cameras (and associated focusing issues), and also for a sound-mix that reduces every third line to an unintelligible mumble.
I enjoyed Moonlight more than this review probably suggests. It didn't blow me away by any means, but it's stayed with me. Which is better, naturally.
I actually don't know, that's how stumped the film has left me.
It's more of a Sunday DVD, to be fair.
Undoubtedly.
It's the first time I've seen many of the faces here, but the film should be at the top of everyone's CV, I'm sure.
Depends on why we're disagreeing.
There's not.
Level 2: Well, that Naomi Harris is in this, and she was in that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End along with Keira 'Sabé' Knightley.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
