Director Spotlight: KASI LEMMONS

Had already seen: none
Watched for this: Eve's Bayou (1997), The Caveman's Valentine (2001), Talk to Me (2007), Black Nativity (2013)
Have not seen:Dr. Hugo (short, 1996), two episodes of television, and Harriet (2019)

I really liked Lemmons' work for the most part. Even when I had more mixed feelings about it, I had empathy.

I have exclaimed about Eve's Bayou already: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/08/watching-movies.html

Since writing that, I realized that one reason it is easy to miss how beautifully everything is set up visually before the end is that you are following a story with a pretty clear plot. The other film in that post, Daughters of the Dust, had images were set up to be striking more than it had moments to clarify what was going in. In that way, it may make more sense to compare Julie Dash to Barry Jenkins, at least for that film. (We will get there.)

There were still some unusual touches in Eve's Bayou, used as ways of treating visions, curses, and fate. Those may have made Lemmons a good choice for The Caveman's Valentine, where it was necessary to give a way of understanding and sympathizing with paranoid schizophrenia.

I am still not sure if that was a good portrayal, at least in terms of portraying schizophrenia realistically. For almost twenty years ago it was probably pretty reasonable. It was inventive and gripping and sometimes very off-putting, but it would have to be. There were touches that reminded me so much of people I have seen on the street. I think it was mostly effective, and it does make me curious about the book.

Black Nativity was the messiest, but it was trying to do a lot. Maybe it was too much.

One goal was to honor the tradition of the play by Langston Hughes. Play might not even be the right word for his Black Nativity; it might work better to call it an African-themed Christmas pageant. The film could have simply filmed that, but the music and the energy is important, and doesn't always transmit. In many areas it is a community tradition, where the wise men might be prominent community members, and the audience might recognize other members of the cast from being local.

To get more of that feeling, the movie creates characters with their own plot lines and problems, and includes a dream sequence to bring home that point more. In addition, for all of those characters, there are downright Dickensian (so still very Christmas appropriate) connections and coincidences, that also represent problems and schisms within the Black community.

That is a lot to fit in, so that is how it gets a little messy and sometimes loses cohesion, which is noticeable. I can't criticize that too much, because I want the mega-happy ending, for those individuals and for the community. I want everyone who choose paternalism and respectability and those who choose materialism and gangster rap and especially everyone who doesn't get much of a choice to be reconciled and healed.

That is why I say I have empathy for the times when I have mixed feelings. The heart is in the right place, and when there are things that are distracting, that is a choice that was made for good reasons. I'm not going to be cynical about that.

So, you may notice issues with The Caveman's Valentine and Black Nativity, and that is fair but does not negate the good in those movies. Black Nativity is the weakest, but it still has value. It could be a reasonable Christmas tradition, though if the Langston Hughes version happened more, that could be even better.

Eve's Bayou and Talk to Me are really gripping films. That is a combination of story, cast, and directing, where everything works together well.

I am going to write some more about Talk to Me in another post, and compare part of it to a completely different thing. Let me just say now, though, that it was a really good movie.