for colored girls: is it me, or...

For Colored Girls: tyler perry film starring whoopi and some other perhaps distractingly attractive ladies

...are my tastes changing?

normally, a movie taking itself this seriously with this much intensity would have made me want to curl up and die.  and don't get me wrong, i did want to curl up and die.  but in the good way.  dear god it was so good.

my friend, though he liked it, said that if the camera had focused one more time on a woman's face, getting blair witch up-close-and-personal with her expelling facial fluids, he would have abdicated the theater, like edward VII for wallis simpson*.  and though, again, i normally would agree with him, in this case, no.  no.  that particular camera move, i thought, was something like a strophe in a poem, a rhyme scheme: a symbol of movement in vision.  besides, that camera shot provided the actresses with the correct frame in which to get their acting done.  no other frame was either possible or necessary.  it was beautiful, what all of them did within that painfully intimate space.  i couldn't take my eyes off it.  i see on imdb (never read others' reviews, sra) that people felt like the poems' readings slowed the movie down, juxtaposed too strangely with the other dialogue.  but i kind of feel like expectations might be getting in the way of a really thrilling reality: those poems are beautiful.  and they are said beautifully.  some of them are more seamlessly interwoven than others, but even if they hadn't been acted so well, the poems would have been worth hearing, period, and i thought that all of them were acted just wonderfully.

i can't say how affective the film was--i've run into this problem before.  with anything that i don't like, it's often just sheer catharsis (as well as one hell of a good time) to rip and tear and maim, and call down my petty thunderings like isabella's jove.  and with stuff i do like but am not "supposed to" like, defending my opinion becomes matter for discussion.  but with something that moved me so much--that i think was felt so truly by its actors and its director--there's kind of nothing to say.

aside from, uh, "see it," i guess.  SEE IT, YOU GLORIOUS BASTARDS!!!  it's magnificent.  hey, here's a thing: if kimberly elise actually gets nominated and/or wins best actress for this, my faith in the academy awards (absolutely destroyed like post-Gojiro box-tokyo by the multiple wins of Titanic) will be either partially or completely restored.  she is so good.  so many of the actresses are magnificent, but her part is...unbelievable, and she takes it and goes where it goes--she takes on the body of her part, which is so horrifying and amazing.  of all the moments she has, i think i got first wrapped up in the way she says "i've loved you since i was fourteen" to her abusive alcoholic husband, and you see the resistance in her to what's in front of her, and some of its cause... i can't.  i have no words.

of course, if she doesn't get nominated, then good bye academy forever and ever.  yeah!  i'm threatening the academy!  i'll believe in you jagweeds even less if kimberly elise doesn't get nominated for best actress!  grumble grumble...("i'll never let go, jack"--let go, kate!  just let go!  what the hell are you doing getting back on that boat???  another 125 minutes of my life, james cameron, really?  spent on watching some people who we all know are going to die get wetter but not in a fun way?  why of course i'll let you have those precious hours!  what would i have spent them on, anyway?  fighting cancer?  writing my novel?  washing the dishes?  window shopping?  microwaving a hot pocket and then eating only half of it?  really anything else in the entire universe?  why would i want to do that?  curse you, academy!  and your eleven wasted statuettes too!!!  lord knows i am not as much of a fan of the sweet heareafter as some i could mention [really, sarah polley?  you're just going to take that dude's dead wife's clothes?], but atom egoyan certainly deserved that statuette more than cameron, or whatever hung-over flunky directed kate and leo through those love scenes [love kate; love leo.  hate titanic]).

oh, there was one thing.  i thought the part just before the...uh, no spoilers?  main event of the plot, should i say?--was overdone.  i totally acknowledge that it was pretty dang difficult moment to do, but it didn't capture much of a feeling.  though in a way, that kind of worked to the film's advantage, because the story even more clearly wasn't about the events of these womens' lives--it was about what they did with them, how they thought of them, and how, in the end, they turned them into poetry.  it made me want to read the book.  that, in this case, was the mark of a good film.


*it took a significant amount of wikipedia-ing to get that reference correct.  i thought it was archduke franz ferdinand who abdicated, which had always confused me because i was like, well, what's even the point of assassinating him then?  symbolic protest?  don't like the hit single "take me out?"  (really really dumb joke, sra.)  but i was wrong.  franz married a lady he shouldn't have, but he still got to be archduke.  which did him a world of good.  it was edward VII who abdicated.  that wallis must have been something something.