MCDBEAN EC086
Before and After (1996)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Far From Heaven, Before and After, Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask and The Key to Rebecca.
Far From Heaven
With barely restrained irony, director Todd Haynes constructed Far From Heaven (2002) from the material of 1950s Hollywood melodramas. Saturated with hyper-real color and lavish period detailing, Far From Heaven renders surface appearances with perfection and then lifts the lid to uncover the era’s unquestioned racism and homophobia. Julianne Moore plays the upper-middle-class housewife with mannequin poise and Dennis Quaid costars as her husband, a man tortured by desires he can barely articulate.
Before and After
A small town in winter, a white steepled church, children playing in the snow—and a murder. The suspicion falls on the teenage son (Edward Furlong) of Ben (Liam Neeson) and Carol (Meryl Streep) who disappears. Ben destroys evidence, which might hurt his son’s case. As usual Neeson plays the hothead; Streep is low-key sympathetic. While hitting melodramatic notes, Before and After (1996) is an engaging story about truth, guilt, justice, family and fate.
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask
Raised on Martinique amidst the rhetoric of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” Frantz Fanon came to Paris to study psychiatry and was shocked by the objectification and dehumanization he experienced. He became an articulate rebel against racism and imperialism of all sorts. British filmmakers Isaac Julian and Mark Nash artfully present Fanon’s life in surreal recreations, interviews with family and cultural critics and archival footage. The title comes from Fanon’s pathfinding book, Black Skin, White Mask (1952).
The Key to Rebecca
A surprisingly engrossing World War II drama, The Key to Rebecca is a 1985 made-for-TV movie out on DVD. Set in Cairo, the sultry story concerns a German spy (David Soul) working with Egyptian nationalists to undermine the British. The suave, manipulative German has all the fun. The story works partly because of an interesting cast, including Robert Culp as Gen. Erwin Rommel and Oscar-winner Cliff Roberson as an American counter-intelligence officer in British uniform.
