Academy
Award winning director Jonathan Demme directs this nearly three hour epic based
on Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Oprah Winfrey plays a former
slave who continues to be haunted by demons of her tragic past. When an old friend,
played by Danny Glover, comes back into her life, she hopes to make a new start.
Demme
sets an eerie and haunting tone for this film that is unmatched, but the story
just didn't hold my interest. Winfrey does a good job, but it's nothing spectacular.
The film really belongs to Thandie Newton, who lets herself go as the supernatural
title character who comes to visit Winfrey's home. It's a ferocious and uninhibited
performance.
Another
strike against Beloved is it's unnecessarily long running time. I'm all for an
extra long opus, but only if the story is involving and continues to have things
to say, which this film didn't. I've always been a big fan of Demme's work but
Beloved was a let down for me. There's been a great deal of controversy over who
deserves credit for the screenplay, and Demme did a respectable job with the material,
regardless who wrote the script.
