I could have easily fit some brief praise for Talk to Me into the post on Kasi Lemmons, but there was one specific thing that stuck out, especially in light of something else I saw recently. That is why there is a separate post.
Talk to Me was invigorating. It starts with the words "Wake up Goddammit!" and those are repeated a few times, and felt needed. Featuring Don Cheadle as DC deejay and former convict Petey Greene, he is well-matched with Taraji P Henson as his love interest, Vernell, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Dewey Hughes, his manager at one time, but an important part of Greene's career before and after.
I have no idea how closely it follows the actual life events of Petey Greene; the movie never shows children but Petey had four, and his wife's name was Judy, not Vernell. I suspect some things were simplified. What you do get is an idea of how much you can love and need someone and still be frustrated by them, personally and professionally. Ideally, you learn not to throw people away because of the things that make them difficult.
But that's not why it needed its own post.
Some of the personality clashes and difficulties come to a head at the radio station where you are expecting a knock-down-drag-out fight, and then a message comes in, and everything stops. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated.
The movie does cover how it affected the city, and that is history, but what struck most was those individual reactions, as they were caught so completely off guard and devastated.
The assassination was also treated in a play I saw recently, Who I Am by Shalanda Sims:
http://www.shalandasims.com/
In the play, you hear part of King's speech from the March on Washington. It does not get to "I have a dream" - perhaps that would be too cliche - but the words are still familiar. Then shots ring out and the other actors scatter and King falls.
Obviously, that is not how it happened, but it brings home the tragedy in a way that a regular depiction could not. It would have been so easy to mess up that moment, and they handled it really well.
Seeing those two depictions close together made it more obvious how visceral my response was.
Dr. King has been dead for longer than I have been alive. I have never known him not dead. I remember starting to feel a heaviness coming over me when I was reading Ralph David Abernathy's biography, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, as we were getting closer. I still felt emotion about the death, and it mattered, but there could not be any shock.
And then there was. That is the magic of film and theater, that something so familiar can become new and feel different.
With Eve's Bayou, Lemmons reminded me how beautiful film could be, in conjunction with Julie Dash and Daughters of the Dust. With Talk To Me - in conjunction with Sims and Who I Am, I have been reminded how transforming film can be.
That is pretty cool.
Related posts:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/03/director-spotlight-kasi-lemmons.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/08/watching-movies.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/02/black-history-month-2019-and-2020.html
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