Video review: "Harriet"

“Harriet” hasn’t been in the awards spotlight as much as it deserves. For me, there was no more powerful emotional journey in a movie this year than the story of Aramintra Ross, better known as Harriet Tubman, an icon of the Underground Railroad.

Tubman guided dozens of slaves to freedom, as she herself had made the harrowing journey as a young woman. She’s become such a mythical figure that the real woman behind the history text has been somewhat lost. Director Kasi Lemmons, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard, breathes life into the legend.

Cynthia Erivo is amazing as Tubman, who gradually transforms from a timid, passive woman to a tough, no-nonsense leader of men.

Many people will be astonished to learn that Tubman was actually married at the time of her escape, to a freed black man no less (Zackary Momoh). But she remained a slave, having already seen her three older sisters sold like cattle and lost forever.

Joe Alwyn plays Gideon Brodess, the eldest son of the family that owns her. They grew up together as childhood friends, and it becomes clear as he becomes the patriarch of the clan that Gideon harbors a twisted obsession with Harriet. Sensing what is to come, she escapes to Philadelphia and falls in with the abolitionist movement.

During her missions to retrieve more slaves, Harriet wears men’s clothing and sings out to them in a resonant voice, old hymns about the slaves throwing off the yoke of the Egyptian pharaohs. Soon there is a large reward on the head of “Moses,” as the slave hunters come to call her.

Lemmons and Erivo go beyond mere biography to delve into the soul of a woman who felt a calling, and claimed to commune with God. “Harriet” takes a two-dimensional legend and gives her breadth and depth.

Video bonus features are not expansive but are quite nice. There is a feature-length commentary track by Lemmons; deleted scenes: “Her Story,” about the three women filmmakers who were key to bringing this story to the screen; and “Becoming Harriet,” an in-depth look at how Erivo built this character.

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Review: "Harriet"

We have a tragic tendency to sanitize great American historical figures, usually to their benefit but mostly to our own detriment. The unwillingness to see George Washington or Thomas Jefferson as complete human beings seems to take one of two forms: deifying them to the point of absurdity or trying to hold their failings as evidence of utter moral decrepitude.

Harriet Tubman is ripe for reexamination as a complicated figure. Taught in the history books as a saintly lady who was a key “conductor” on the Underground Railroad bringing slaves to freedom, Tubman has been revealed in more recent scholarship as a rough, pistol-packing woman capable of great egotism and jealousy.

“Harriet” is the vibrant new cinematic portrait of Tubman played by relative unknown Cynthia Erivo, who won’t stay that way long. Director Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Gregory Allen Howard, has delivered a bravura film that is part reverence, part religion-tinged redemption and part action/adventure.

It’s a compelling, complex biopic.

The story begins in 1849 Maryland, where Aramintra “Minty” Ross was born to slave parents held by the Brodess family, though her father (Clarke Peters) later earned his freedom. Minty was also allowed to marry another free black, John Tubman (a soulful Zackary Momoh), but remained in bondage after the patriarch of the slave owners died and the yoke passed to the spiteful son, Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn, utterly chilling).

The film actually follows the historical record pretty closely, with obvious fictionalized portions to fill in the gaps. So there are created figures like Walter (Henry Hunter Hall), a charming rapscallion slave tracker who walks the line between friend and foe, and the much scarier Bigger Long (Omar Dorsey), who seems to regard returning slaves to bondage as his personal calling.

Other aspects of the story that might seem like Hollywood hokum are actually part of the historical record. For example, that Minty was injured by a heavy object thrown by a master splitting her head open as a girl that left a dent in her forehead, and was prone to somnambulist spells the rest of her life where she would go into a daze.

It was during these times that Tubman claimed to commune with God. “The hole in my head just made God’s voice more clear,” she says.

Emotionally rent by already having three older sisters sold and lost to the family forever, Minty resolves not to let the same happen when Gideon means to sell her away down south. She runs away to Philadelphia, a harrowing journey assisted by kindly black preacher (Vondie Curtis-Hall) who cites Biblical scripture about slaves honoring their masters during the day but preaches a different tune when white folks aren’t around.

There she meets and allies with noted abolitionist William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.) and finds friendship with Marie Buchanan (Janelle Monáe), a sympathetic but privileged black hotelier.

The film’s strongest sections relate to Tubman’s escapades back to Maryland and other slaveholding states to rescue other slaves, her legend steadily growing. Because she dresses in a man’s clothing and sings hymns about slaves freeing themselves from the Egyptian pharaohs, she is given the name of Moses by the slave masters. For her part, Minty takes her husband’s last name and her mother’s first to form her own “free name.”

It’s a wonderful, rich story, and at the center of it all is Erivo as Harriet.

The actress plays her as a woman born to believe she is nothing, but her faith and resolve eventually force her to strive against a system that is evil and unjust. Especially haunting is the strange relationship she has with Gideon, who grew up with her as children and clearly covets her for more than her cash price.

She begins the film with eyes wide and fearful, and as time goes on her gaze gains a hard glint. The legend of Harriet Tubman has grown to titanic size, but “Harriet” shows the extraordinaire real woman who begat centuries of stories. This is one of the year's best films.

Review: "Black Nativity"

The Christmas pageant is a familiar holiday tradition for most everyone who grew up in America, and “Black Nativity” is the closest cinematic replication one could think of. There’s singing, dancing, some mild religiosity, and family tensions giving way to warm togetherness.

Writer/director Kasi Lemmons loosely adapts the stage musical version of the Nativity story told with an all-black cast written by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. It’s almost an homage to Hughes himself, with the main character, Langston Cobbs (Jacob Latimore), bearing his name and legacy.

The film is colorful, joyous and heartfelt. The characters exist more as archetypes than flesh-and-blood beings, but that’s part and parcel of adapting mythology into modern times. The Cobbs family also takes center stage, while the tale of Mary and Joseph (Grace Gibson and Luke James) gets turned into the backdrop.

Think of it this way: various people wander on and off the stage, declaring themselves to us in song and prose, and then they all get together at the end to usher us on our way back into our own regular lives. We relate to them not as actual people who we might stumble into on the street, but as representations of ourselves, both our ideals and our failings. Their role is not to convince us they could be real, but to embody our innermost desires for ourselves, and how we often fail to live up to them.

And, it should be said, the music is very, very good. Much of it is gospel influenced, which shouldn’t surprise as the main character is a preacher and the last act takes place in his church on Christmas Eve. I particularly liked the songs “Fix Me” and “Be Grateful.”

Latimore is a well-known R&B artist, and other famous performers surface as cast members such as Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige and Nas. But mainstream actors Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett and Tyrese Gibson also croon in, showing off pipes we didn’t know they had. (Whitaker in particular shines with a gorgeous, smooth baritone.)

Langston Cobbs is a youth from Baltimore, where he lives with his single mother, Naimi (Hudson). She lost her job and is struggling to make ends meet, and their brownstone is about to be foreclosed. She sends her son to stay with her estranged grandparents in Harlem, with the tacit implication that he may be there for a while.

Langston has never met his grandparents, or even knew they existed. It’s a big culture shock. While not a bad kid, he’s used to a certain amount of independence and sass, and neither are much brooked in the home of Cornell and Angela Cobbs (Whitaker and Bassett). Rev. Cobbs is a man who wears his dignity like a fine suit that he cares for well, much like the pocket watch he was personally given by Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s a mysterious big hurt between the elders Cobbses and their daughter, and Langston spends the rest of the story trying to ferret out what it is. Gibson plays Tyson, a street tough who offers some advice and help, though not necessarily in pursuits that will have a positive outcome.

While some might be annoyed that the story of Jesus takes a backseat to the Cobbs clan, I found their company more like an embrace that feels awkward at first, but becomes warmer as the audience and movie clutch harder. Bring on the show.