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For Colored Girls
Movie Blurb by Shale
November 6, 2010
Altho I have missed a lot of Tyler Perry's movies exploring black-American culture, I had planned to see this one because it is from a classic play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, written in poetic prose by Ntozake Shange in 1974. OK, I've never seen the play, nor read the verse, but I was around in 1974, exploring cultural changes in New Orleans - including new intimate exposure to black people, which was still frowned upon by the mainstream. I remember seeing a poster for the play at my artist/musician friend Katrina's French Quarter warehouse apartment in the late '70s but paid it little attention at the time.
Finally it has come to the big screen and I felt obliged to see this moment of American social history. Since I planned to see it I ventured to read the local review by Rene Rodriguez in The Miami Herald - who pretty much panned it with one star out of four and a headline "Great play is suffocating as a movie." So, I checked Rottentomatoes online and his assessment was consistent with the aggregate reviewers, only 32% of whom liked the movie. However, 77% of moviegoers liked it, which makes me think that professional reviewers overthink movies and make the error of comparing movies to written works or plays. They are different media!
I am seeing this movie freestanding. I know nothing of the play or the prose. I went to see it because of the list of current black actresses involved.
Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Janet Jackson, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine, Tessa Thompson, Thandie Newton.
My only expectation was that it would be dated (altho Shange updated the play on its 20th anniversary to include the new venereal disease - AIDS). Much of the monologue from the play was in the script but the movie set and technology was modern. It gave me a sense of the 1997 Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo & Juliet which was set in modern LA but delivering Shakespeare's lines.
I invited my 40-something daughter Rosalyn and 20-something granddaughter-in-law Taisha to see it with me. I figured it would be of interest to them, even tho the original play was before both their times. However, a lot of the problems for colored girls in the '70s still exist today.
Colored Girls Consultants
As I suspected they and I are with the majority of audiences that liked this movie. Taisha said she loved the way the characters were all linked in some way. She also said it should not be considered just for colored girls but for all women. I ran down some of the history of the moment for them, the new feminism that was emerging in the '70s and especially its impact on black women when this poem was written. I also explained how this was originally portrayed as a play with only women doing the lines on a minimalist stage. Much of that could be sensed when the women delivered these words, altho there was now dialogue given to the males in the movie.
Rosalyn said she enjoyed the poetic prose but Taisha felt that less poetic monologue would have communicated better to young black girls. I guess that is the difference in communication over the generations and as a movie I agree the dialogue could have been in common vernacular.
This is a story of black female experience as told thru nine different protagonists whose lives intertwine around the Harlem tenement where many of them live.
Gilda the Bldg Sup (Phylicia Rashad)
This R-rated movie has some tense and sad moments as it explores many common problems of alcoholism, abuse, rape, sexually transmitted disease and looking for love in all the wrong places.
Movie Blurb by Shale
November 6, 2010
Altho I have missed a lot of Tyler Perry's movies exploring black-American culture, I had planned to see this one because it is from a classic play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, written in poetic prose by Ntozake Shange in 1974. OK, I've never seen the play, nor read the verse, but I was around in 1974, exploring cultural changes in New Orleans - including new intimate exposure to black people, which was still frowned upon by the mainstream. I remember seeing a poster for the play at my artist/musician friend Katrina's French Quarter warehouse apartment in the late '70s but paid it little attention at the time.
Finally it has come to the big screen and I felt obliged to see this moment of American social history. Since I planned to see it I ventured to read the local review by Rene Rodriguez in The Miami Herald - who pretty much panned it with one star out of four and a headline "Great play is suffocating as a movie." So, I checked Rottentomatoes online and his assessment was consistent with the aggregate reviewers, only 32% of whom liked the movie. However, 77% of moviegoers liked it, which makes me think that professional reviewers overthink movies and make the error of comparing movies to written works or plays. They are different media!
I am seeing this movie freestanding. I know nothing of the play or the prose. I went to see it because of the list of current black actresses involved.
Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Janet Jackson, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Devine, Tessa Thompson, Thandie Newton.
My only expectation was that it would be dated (altho Shange updated the play on its 20th anniversary to include the new venereal disease - AIDS). Much of the monologue from the play was in the script but the movie set and technology was modern. It gave me a sense of the 1997 Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo & Juliet which was set in modern LA but delivering Shakespeare's lines.
I invited my 40-something daughter Rosalyn and 20-something granddaughter-in-law Taisha to see it with me. I figured it would be of interest to them, even tho the original play was before both their times. However, a lot of the problems for colored girls in the '70s still exist today.
Colored Girls Consultants
As I suspected they and I are with the majority of audiences that liked this movie. Taisha said she loved the way the characters were all linked in some way. She also said it should not be considered just for colored girls but for all women. I ran down some of the history of the moment for them, the new feminism that was emerging in the '70s and especially its impact on black women when this poem was written. I also explained how this was originally portrayed as a play with only women doing the lines on a minimalist stage. Much of that could be sensed when the women delivered these words, altho there was now dialogue given to the males in the movie.
Rosalyn said she enjoyed the poetic prose but Taisha felt that less poetic monologue would have communicated better to young black girls. I guess that is the difference in communication over the generations and as a movie I agree the dialogue could have been in common vernacular.
This is a story of black female experience as told thru nine different protagonists whose lives intertwine around the Harlem tenement where many of them live.
Gilda the Bldg Sup (Phylicia Rashad)
This R-rated movie has some tense and sad moments as it explores many common problems of alcoholism, abuse, rape, sexually transmitted disease and looking for love in all the wrong places.
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