The Catholic Weekly 21 June 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 21 21, June, 2020 VISTA WILL BE TAKING A SHORT BREAK ... But watch this page for more interesting news locally and from around the world Hollywood’s patchy record on race NO MOTION picture drama has had the power to change minds the way the on-video death of George Floyd in the custody of police in Minneap- olis recently did. No fictional feature ever will. Death on a street, with a police officer’s knee on a man’s neck, is the brutal, unvarnished reality that has spurred thousands of protest- ers nationwide to march and forced legislators to ponder the role of police both as en- forcers of the law and partici- pants in a larger society. With rare exceptions, the business model of the film industry is based on offering emotions, illusions, distrac- tion and comfort for the larg- est possible audiences. Mov- ies about racial injustice have been around since Holly- wood’s beginnings. But while they add prestige and the illusion of an industry con- science, they’ve never been a foundational genre. In the wake of the death of Floyd on 25 May – plus those of Breonna Taylor, the emer- gency room technician killed by police in Louisville, Ken- tucky on 13 March and Ah- maud Arbery, the jogger slain in Brunswick, Georgia on 23 February – the film industry, like the rest of America, is cop- ing with the latest violent ev- idence of the nation’s painful – and frustratingly enduring – racial divide. An identical discussion is ongoing about readingmatter, and which works of non-fic- tion and fiction can help. But that’s civilised and literate. The public conversation about movies – which have had their own ugly history with the lack of minority participation on both sides of the camera – is as noisy and sloppy as a fam- ily dispute. That doesn’t indicate a lack of sincerity. It just means that film distributors, like the rest of us, are working out their confusion in real time and in full view of everyone else. On 9 June, the streaming service HBO Max announced that it was pulling Gone With the Wind from its rotation un- til “historical context” can be added to the presentation. That came after John Rid- ley, the Academy Award-win- ning screenwriter of 12 Years A Slave (2013), wrote about the 1939 Civil War drama in the Los Angeles Times. He de- scribed it as “a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpet- uate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of col- our.” The search by audiences for a soothing way to cope with the Floydmurder brought one odd result. The top streaming film on Netflix over the 5-7 June weekend was 2011’s The Help , a drama about a white writer who interviews domes- tic workers in the South to bring their stories about abu- sive racist employers to the public. There’s a satisfying retrib- utive ending to the story, but the film is no one’s idea of an accurate commentary on race relations. It’s often criticised for its “white saviour” plot – and one of its stars, Viola Da- vis, has since disowned her participation. Another of the film’s stars, Bryce Dallas Howard, found its sudden new popularity jar- ring. She posted on Facebook: “Stories are a gateway to rad- John Lewis, a state politician in the US state of Georgia, is shown in a scene from the documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble. PHOTO: CNS PHOTO/COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES ical empathy and the greatest ones are catalysts for action.” She also provided her own list of recommended movies on race, most of them documen- taries. Other developments were more sensible. Paramount and Warner Bros. have an- nounced that two fact-based films dealing with race will be streaming free throughout June. The first is 2014’s Selma , a biopic of the Rev. Martin Lu- ther King Jr starring David Oyelowo. The other, 2019’s Just Mercy , is a legal drama about inequities in the crimi- nal justice system starring Mi- chael Jordan and Jamie Foxx. On 3 July, Magnolia Pic- tures will release J ohn Lewis: Good Trouble , a respectful documentary about the con- temporary civil rights leader and Georgia politician. Lewis observes of current events: “There are forces today try- ing to take us back to another time and another dark day.” Lewis, a veteran of the 1963 March on Washington and a victim of racial violence in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, nonetheless remains an opti- mist: “I just keep on believing that we can change things. That we can make things bet- ter.” Film dramas can inspire and educate quite well. 2018’s Green Book , for instance, which detailed a concert tour taken by a black pianist and his white driver, is especially good at showing examples of the nuanced ways deep-set racial prejudice worked in the 1960s. What Howard calls “cata- lysts for action” may not pro- duce a change in tenaciously held attitudes. Yet dramas and documen- taries can continue to be part of a path forward toward un- derstanding. In 2017, filmmaker Yance Ford, whose documentary Strong Island recounted his brother’s 1992 death at the hands of police, observed to The New York Times : “Only in America does it take movies to authenticate reality and not the other way around.” - CNS The public conversation about movies ... is as noisy and sloppy as a family dispute ...It just means that film distrib- utors, like the rest of us, are working out their confusion in real time and in full view of everyone else.” ¾ ¾ Kurt Jensen Worth the watch “13TH” (2016) THIS DOCUMEN- TARY by Ava DuVer- nay (who also directed Selma ) explores the leg- acy of slavery, the disen- franchisement of African Americans during the Jim Crow era and the contin- ued inequities in incar- ceration. “BURDEN” (2018) ALOTof swearing, sleeve- less flannel shirts, Ku Klux Klan rallies with men in hoods and a villain, Tom Griffin (Tom Wilkinson) so racist that when he’s in a Chinese restaurant, he asks whether they serve dog, make this drama a little tough to take. But writer-director Andrew Heckler tells a specifically Christian sto- ry, based on true expe- riences. The Rev. David Kennedy (Forest Whitak- er) takes in Mike Burden (Garrett Hedlund) and his wife, Judy (Andrea Riseborough), when they become homeless after Mike relinquishes his KKK membership. Ken- nedy insists on praying for his enemies. “MUDBOUND” (2017) SET IN rural Mississip- pi in the years just after World War II and based on the Hillary Jordan nov- el, director Dee Rees’ dra- ma explores the intercon- nections between white and black farming fami- lies and the ugly realities of white supremacy and the practice of sharecrop- ping that guaranteed in- come inequality. “SAY HER NAME: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SANDRA BLAND” (2018) THIS HBO documenta- ry is about a woman who committed suicide in 2015 in jail after she was dragged from her car dur- ing a routine traffic stop. Bland was in the habit of making Facebook vide- os, and in one, she told friends, “Sandy is gon- na speak whenever I see something wrong.”Thanks to filmmakers Kate Da- vis and David Heilbroner, she’s able to continue to do so even in death. - CNS ENTERTAINMENT