On one level, this is a ghost story. Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) and her daughter Denver (Kimberly Elise) are sharing a house with the spiteful spirit of Sethe’s other daughter, dead for 18 years. Sethe’s two sons have abandoned her, and the sullen, terrified Denver is a virtual prisoner in her own home. Sethe, who gave birth to Denver as she was escaping from the slave plantation Sweet Home, is a prisoner of the past, her mind as scarred with a secret guilt as her back is scarred with lashes. Into their lives come two figures promising hope. Paul D (Danny Glover) is a former Sweet Home slave who moves in with Sethe, offering her his love. The other is a mysterious feral creature who calls herself Beloved (Thandie Newton), speaks in a ghastly croak and is the age Sethe’s baby would have been had she lived. Is this wild child the ghost made flesh? Is she an agent of destruction or salvation?
A chamber drama stretched into epic form, this sprawling movie is an odd mixture of the intimate and the grandiose, historical gravity and Gothic claptrap. One of the difficulties of translating the book to screen is that most of the story’s crucial events take place in the past: it’s Sweet Home that forged Sethe’s character. Demme is understandably reluctant to linger on the horrors of slavery, but it’s a dramaturgical mistake. The quick, shocking flashbacks of Sethe’s brutalization by her white masters don’t do the job–they’re horrific, but with a B-movie luridness. The present-tense story of Sethe, Paul D and Beloved doesn’t work properly unless we feel in our guts the burden of those years. That’s what the story’s about–slavery’s spiritual fallout–yet that’s what’s excised from the movie. Jumping about in time, the film often feels as if it were searching for its center. It takes a long time to get pulled in; it’s not until its final hour that it’s able to sustain any emotional momentum.
Yet along the way there are scenes that transfix you. The film bursts into life whenever Beah Richards is on screen. As Sethe’s mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, a freed slave turned preacher woman, she delivers a sermon from atop a rock as men dance joyously around her; the moment is magical. Elise is astonishing as Denver: her transformation from outcast to independent woman gives the movie its defining arc. As for Winfrey, any fear that her TV persona would distract us is instantly erased: she effortlessly slips inside Sethe’s stoic, haunted skin. Playing the young Sethe, Lisa Gay Hamilton uncannily matches up with Winfrey. You almost forget you’re watching another actress in the role. Glover captures Paul D’s charm, and the long miles this man has traveled in his life. As for the unearthly, grotesque Beloved, it’s a part that may be as unplayable as the novel is ultimately unfilmable. There are moments when Newton’s grimacing, sepulchral-voiced performance unfortunately invokes ““The Exorcist.’’ Like the movie itself, Newton takes big risks and doesn’t always succeed. But you have to salute the attempt. However flawed, ““Beloved’’ never plays it safe.
