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Friday, January 30, 2015

MOVIE REVIEW Black Or White
In Re Custody, And This Film's Poor Ownership Of Race


Jillian Estell as Eloise and Kevin Costner as Elliot in Mike Binder's custody drama "Black Or White".  Relativity
       
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        FOLLOW                                            TWEET
Friday, January 30, 2015

Mike Binder's child custody drama "Black Or White" -- formerly titled "Black And White" -- places issues of race, perception and parenting on the table but drowns them in the standard clichés and caricatures that have sunk so many other films on this subject matter ("Losing Isiah").  Mr. Binder, who directed "Reign Over Me" and "The Upside Of Anger", falls far short of those better films with this horribly slanted examination of a Black-white custody fight.

Tragedy strikes Elliot (Kevin Costner), an alcoholic and subsequent widower after the loss of his wife (Jennifer Ehle) and their daughter, who died during childbirth.  Elliot's granddaughter Eloise (Jillian Estell) is biracial, and her Black father Reggie (André Holland) is a crack addict with a criminal history.  Reggie's mother Rowena, aka "We-We" (Octavia Spencer) both pities and scorns Elliot, whom she fights for full custody.

"Black Or White" introduces issues and complications of race but does nothing with them.  There's no attempt to dive deeper.  Granted, the film is entertainment, but these crucial issues aren't explored with the requisite seriousness the subject matter demands.  There's a tangle of spaghetti Mr. Binder places on a table that he quickly speeds away from, varnishing complication over with equal helpings of canned warmth and antagonism.

Worse yet, "Black Or White" is awash with stereotypes and Elliot's white paternalistic view of the Black characters.  Mr. Holland, who was the upstanding Andrew Young in "Selma", here as Reggie gets dumped with the worst racist stereotypes you can imagine.  He can't read.  Can't spell.  Can't write.  Crack addict.  Gambler.  Bad father.  Criminal.  (The one thing he doesn't have is HIV.)  Reggie is the opposite of Sidney Poitier's impossibly "perfect" character in "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner".  His loaded, decrepit background makes it easy for the audience to root for Elliot's quest for custody.

"Black Or White", not framed as a question, answers its choice-implied title fairly early on, viewed entirely from Elliot's perspective.  No time is given to see events from the viewpoint of Blacks in Mr. Binder's film. 

The Blacks in "Black Or White" are background monolithic noise, prominent mostly when Mr. Costner is present onscreen.  There's no attempt to get to know what makes Rowena tick.  Her bulging eyes and cocked-back head (Ms. Spencer did this on her way to an Oscar in the equally disgraceful "The Help") are the only things telling Rowena's story.  When Blacks have time alone on screen in "Black Or White" they are either shouting at each other, dancing, watching TV or smoking crack.  It's revealing that the film has a refracted, preconceived lens about half of its characters, and sees Blacks as Elliot does.  The Blacks are displayed as figments of the white imagination.

In purportedly addressing complex issues, "Black Or White" ghettoizes, criminalizes its Black characters and has them perp-walk in stereotypes.  Mr. Binder never cares to look at their complexities or multi-dimensional aspects.  The Blacks in "Black Or White" look like cartoon characters, people you can't take seriously.  Even before the witty, appealing Family Court judge (Paula Cummings, a distinctive presence) has decided whether Elliot or Rowena gets custody of Eloise the film has already told its audience whom custody will be awarded to merely from how it has stacked the deck from the very start. 

Reggie's drug habits and behavioral troubles are catalogued.  There's no shred of redemption in him unless it is connected solely to Elliot's well-being.  "Black Or White" is a shameless, regressive drama as injurious as "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" (1968) or "The Help" (2011).  In fact it is more injurious than those films.  At least in 1968 the very nature of the overtly hostile racial climate in America mandated that a wholly artificial and "perfect" Sidney Poitier character be palatable to white audiences.  In 2011 however, there was no excuse for dilution or buffoonery.  There's certainly none today, especially with an ever-changing racial demographic in America.  Which makes "Black Or White", situated in its time and place in present-day America, all the more callous, cowardly and dishonest. 

Hollywood films about Blacks are either viewed in a safe past or seen in a caricatured, stereotyped present.  Aside from "Selma" there's very little in-between.

The opportunity to entertain and engage me was trampled by the usually brilliant Terence Blanchard's overbearing Hallmark card score, and by Black characters' trivial bickering and outright waywardness.  "Black Or White" feels like "Driving Miss Daisy", as Duvan (Mpho Koaho), an African scholar, teacher and decorated man drives a drunken Elliot around Los Angeles and into South Central, where Elliot waltzes around as if it is his backyard.  Like Ethan Hawke's night-time wandering cop character in "Training Day" the movie shows Elliot as some kind of intrepid sheriff figure -- walking around in South Central Los Angeles as if he owns it.  Elliotville.

The film's racial double standard on incorrect behaviors is duplicitous: Elliot's alcoholism is excused, sympathized with and rationalized in the wake of his personal family losses, while Reggie's crack habit is, as you would expect, naturally deemed injurious.  There's no examination of Reggie's issues, other than through dismissive or scant dialogue.  Somehow, the drunken Elliot, whom the film soaks in white privilege, and who shows no interest in getting treatment for his alcoholism, is fully capable of full custody of Eloise, while her father Reggie, who is trying to get himself help, isn't. 

Stranger still is the capitulation of Rowena and family during one scene.  It simply makes no sense.  And it is deeply insulting.  It's as if Rowena, so stout in her passionate advocacy, suddenly doesn't care.  Her bizarre change of heart comes out of almost nothing grounded in reality.  It all looks false and unrealistic.  The whole film looks and feels inauthentic, a "We Are The World" fantasy that corrupts and sends race relations between Blacks and whites on the big screen back to "Birth Of A Nation" days. 

I'm dead serious.  I literally felt harmed by this film -- by its poor dialogue and retrograde view of Blacks.  It's an expedient effort to tie a neat ribbon around a thorny box of issues.  You can't sugarcoat race under the guise of a racial custody battle.  It's like the attempt to "soften" or de-emphasize slavery in "Django Unchained": it doesn't work, or end well. 

Mr. Binder doesn't get a cookie for introducing issues of race in custody fights and then walking away from them.  When it comes to any issue including race in a film, half a loaf isn't better than no loaf -- especially when that loaf is poisoned by the dismissal of key issues.  Why mention issues at all if you don't intend to sincerely address or entertain any of them?  The cursory nature of the racial dynamics in "Black Or White" are oversimplified, including most notably in a courtroom speech Elliot gives.  Just the way the speech scene is shot tells you how much sympathy the film has for him.  It's a painful sight.  The only difference between Elliot's courtroom speech and Mr. Costner's Jim Garrison courtroom speech in "JFK" is he's sitting, and in the latter film he is standing, with conviction.

"Black Or White", which argues on behalf of a non-existent post-racial society, insults the notion of race relations and any conversation about them, instead making theatrical its throne on race, shrouding it in dishonesty.  When Elliot talks about whether he hates Black people it is a moment that plays solely to the film's white viewers.  It's an affirmation and nod to whites that says, "it's okay to have some hate or dislike of Blacks -- you need not justify why you do."  The scene represents a salving of guilt in the white audience's own disposition on race.  Yet the context and substance of the courtroom scene is entirely dishonest and destructive.  The courtroom scene does white audiences a big disservice.  One they hardly deserve.

I was angered by "Black Or White".  Angered by its disingenuousness, its failure to puncture through the surface, and its facile take on race.  With its flattening and non-dimensional Black characters it's a thorough failure.  Fine, nuanced performers like Ms. Ehle (whom I follow on social media and follows me) are sadly wasted here.  All of the actors are wasted in the director's shallow script.  There's no growth, nourishment, nor any credible discussion on race unless it is wrapped in caricature.  Ms. Estell, great here as Eloise, is, alas, the sweetened center of a rotten celluloid catastrophe.  That's the dismay -- that a film's sweetened artifice is its very disaster.

I've got to a point now where whenever a white filmmaker directs a film about race or issues surrounding it I cringe.  Why?  The answers:* "Cry Freedom", "Mississippi Burning", "The Help", "Soul Man", "Glory", "Driving Miss Daisy", "Get On Up", "Ali", "Bird", "The Green Mile", "The Legend Of Bagger Vance", "To Kill A Mockingbird" -- I could go on and on.  Each of these films advertised or intended to be about Blacks ends up largely being about a white protagonist or self-destructive behavior by a Black character -- and thus caters to the comfort of the white audience attending it.

These and other films are ostensibly designed to make white moviegoers comfortable.  These films ask white people not to work on overcoming white privilege and are an endorsement of their standing within the racial climate of America, when in fact so much needs to be earnestly and honestly explored.  Such has been the case for decades in America entertainment-wise, and in Hollywood.  It's perfectly fine to make a film tailored to specific audiences but it's a sin to do so while purportedly claiming or implying -- in the film's title -- that your story's treatment of an issue, and characters, will be more wide-ranging, meaningful, diverse and involved than it actually is.

Also with: Bill Burr, Gillian Jacobs.

*This review was corrected.  One of the film titles erroneously listed as a film by a white director was Euzhan Palcy's "A Dry White Season".  While the film displayed much of its content re: apartheid through its white protagonists,  Ms. Palcy is from the African continent.  She has also directed such films as "Sugar Cane Alley".

"Black Or White" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for brief strong language, thematic material involving drug use and drinking, and for a fight.  Its running time is two hours and one minute.





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