Hey y’all:
I’d have to agree with you about this being the year for ensemble work, Sarah. One of the best performances of the year came in a movie with an ensemble cast not enough people saw. Malcolm Lee’s The Best Man featured a turn by Terrence Howard that should’ve propelled him into movie-star orbit. He had the best entrance I saw in a movie all year–strumming a flamenco guitar solo while clocking the honeys in a Manhattan club. Then, as he strolled off the stage, he strummed the neck of the guitar. Sassy and charismatic, as was Melissa DeSouza, as the spoiled buppie who played her ma like a 12-inch. There it is, as they used to say back in the ‘90s. Given all the trends that have been tagged and tracked this year, and all the excitement that Roger mentioned about films in general, it’s still a troubling time for black performers. Had Howard or DeSouza been in a movie officially sanctioned by the hip media–a contradiction in terms if ever there was one, they’d have three picture deals with Miramax. Or at least Dimension. Instead, there’s still a separate-but-equal division for actors of color for the most part. I cringe when I think of the hunger there must’ve been among African-American actors for what will end up being the highest profile part for a black man this year: the John Coffey role in The Green Mile. Michael Duncan Clarke handles the role with all the dignity he can muster, and it’s undeniably a well-meaning movie. But to have a gentle black giant hang his head and say “Yes, Boss,” while almost every guard in a Louisiana prison circa 1935 is portrayed as a forward-thinking, tolerant humanist is the biggest backhanded slap I’ve seen in a studio movie in a long time.
Which is why I was so impressed by Three Kings. It spins the race issue from all angles–all the stuff about what derogatory term is proper for an Arab, co-signed by Ice Cube, until he glimpses the Rodney King beating on a TV inside the bunker. And the self-hatred speech about Michael Jackson may have been, if you’ll pardon the expression, too on-the-nose, but so what? The movie whipped along so quickly, I’m happy it took a moment for a breather at that point. Sure, the atrocities heaped on the children throw you out of the movie the same way the hospital scene in The Third Man does–but if the point of the movie is that war isn’t fun and games, then it should be equally assaultive on all points.
And that will be all I have to say about Three Kings. Unless until this check from David Russell clears my Los Angeles bank. Incidentally, did anybody see a remarkable Australian movie about an intense, and doomed, love affair called Praise? Because its frankness and heat bring to mind another suffering genre–the adult-relationship film. Most of the best stuff of the year was playful but missed, y’know, human interaction.
