Helga without the H

Every year* I attempt (with varying degrees of success and effort) to watch as many of that year’s Oscar nominees as possible. For the past few years* I’ve posted reviews of these movies here on this blog. At some point before the awards ceremony, I usually write up some sort of over-analysis and maybe some predictions, but we’ll see if I run out of steam before then. In the meantime, today we cover…

*Except 2022, when I was too burned out from 2021’s binge to give a crap.

The Color Purple

[1 nomination for best supporting actress (Danielle Brooks)]

IS IT SALTBURN? No.

I was very curious about this film. I’ve never read the book, but I remember seeing the 80’s movie many years ago, and thinking it was one of the most depressing movies I’d ever seen. And now they’ve made a musical version? How would that even work?

Short answer: It didn’t.

At least, not for me. I could see it maybe working on stage, but honestly, even that seems like it would be a stretch (but I’ll reserve judgment until I actually see it.) The main problem for me was that the tone of the musical numbers, happy and uplifting and beautiful, just didn’t match the extremely serious subject matter. I’ve seen other movies with sad stories that effectively turn to musical numbers as fantasy escapes (Dancer in the Dark is a prime example), but that’s not what’s happening here. The musical numbers are just normal stage musical numbers. The filmmakers don’t even do anything to make the dance scenes feel like a movie; instead the story stops, and everyone in the background just dances like they’re on stage. Then the story picks up afterwards. Again, it just didn’t work.

The good news is, nobody at the Academy is claiming that it worked, either. The lone nomination here is for a best supporting actress role. Having seen the 80’s movie, I knew this film had plenty of juicy roles for female side characters. I also knew it had a super solid cast. So whoever was nominated here is probably someone who really deserved it. When I saw it way Taystee from Orange is the New Black (Danielle Brooks) playing the strong-willed Oprah character, I was stoked. I entered the movie with really high hopes for her performance, because I absolutely loved her in OITNB. I knew she had chops. I was excited to see her nominated. And I was really hoping that she would blow my socks off, because, honestly, this was the last best supporting actress film in my binge, and so far the nominees have been frustrating lackluster. I was hoping that she’d be an instant winner in my mind.

Alas…

She was fine. I mean, that sounds negative, let me rephrase… She did a great job with what she was given! But she wasn’t given much, and that’s a crying shame. Her character is given so little screentime that it was just impossible to build her arc the way it needed to be built. This is a very strong character who goes through multiple HUGE changes in her life. We have to see every dang emotion from this woman. She wasn’t playing one nuanced character throughout a long film, one she could carefully craft and develop. Instead, she had to play basically three or four different women, and totally extreme women, with only a few seconds to depict each one. It was maddening. It wasn’t enough time to be believable. Like, at all. Maybe if we weren’t wasting so much time on pointless distracting musical numbers, we would have more time for this character to shift without it seeming so melodramatic. Her tone shifted as suddenly and unexpectedly as Tommy Wiseau’s in The Room. The big difference between Brooks and Wiseau, of course, is that one of them is an absolutely amazing actor, and the other is, well, this guy:

The problem here is that I just don’t know how to judge this. It’s not Brooks’ fault that the rest of the filmmaking was subpar. She did a great job with the little that she was given. But does that warrant an Oscar? I honestly don’t know.

Meanwhile, I was confused on why she, in particular, is the performer singled out from this film. Everyone else did great with their under-written roles, too! In particular, I was surprised that Taraji P. Henson wasn’t the one nominated here, because she was stunning on screen. But maybe I only felt this way because she had way more screentime. And Brooks did get to have much bigger emotions with her larger-than-life character, so I guess that’s why the nod went her way.

None of this was the main think I was thinking while watching the film. The main thing I was thinking was “is this the exact type of storytelling that was being called-out and critiqued in American Fiction? I mean, it’s just a couple straight hours of black people being abused and shit on. This movie features all the bad fathers and substance abuse Monk takes exception to, thrown right into the Jim Crow south for good measure. And this discomfort (for better or for worse) definitely permeated and tainted my ability to objectively enjoy the movie. I’m curious how different I would have felt if I’d watched The Color Purple before watching American Fiction. I don’t think my review would be much different, given that my critiques and praise were based on things that had nothing to do with race. But you never know.