BEFORE: It's the last day of February, and they aired the SAG Awards last night, which reminded me of a few things:
A) I've really got to start thinking about the Oscars, and maybe making decisions that will allow me to watch a few more nominated films before the awards are given out on March 27. I've got a way to work in "The Power of the Dog", and maybe I should do that, because it seems to be some kind of front-runner. So far the only nominated films I've seen are "Dune", "House of Gucci" (Best Make-up/Hair nomination), "Coming 2 America" (ditto) and the visual effects combo of "Shang-Chi" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home". At this rate, I should be able get to "Free Guy" in time, but not "The Lost Daughter" or "Tick, Tick, Boom" - which is stupid, because I work at a theater that showed "Belfast" twice and "Licorice Pizza" about five times, also "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" and "The Lost Daughter", but I held back because of my stupid chain.
B) I was, honestly, a little more prepared for the SAG Awards, because they nominated TWO actors from "House of Gucci" and Ruth Negga from tonight's film, plus they also gave a lifetime achievement award to Helen Mirren, who I JUST watched in "Berlin, I Love You". Still, I'd seen none of the winning performances in motion pictures.
C) Where TV is concerned, I must REALLY be not watching enough of it. I don't think I've watched even ONE series, network, cable or streaming, that got nominated for a SAG Award. Sure, I've been focused on movies, not TV - and the TV I do watch is a mix of old, rebooted shows like "Law & Order" and "CSI", plus a lot of food competition shows like "Top Chef", "Spring Baking Championship" and "Man vs. Food". So no time for "Mare of Easttown", "Halston", "The White Lotus", "Succession", "The Morning Show", "The Handmaid's Tale", "The Kominsky Method", "The Great", "Ted Lasso", "Only Murders in the Building" or even "Squid Game". Jesus, I spent part of my pandemic time watching "Tiger King" and "The Queen's Gambit" and I thought maybe I was making some progress - nope, not one bit. Where the hell do all you other people find so much free time to watch all these shows?
Now, "Passing" is not nominated for any Oscars, but it did play at the theater where I work, and I did listen to a Q&A from the director, Rebecca Hall, and actor Bill Camp. So this does help me, as does watching any film, and it reduces the number of films from my 2021 Oscar-eligible list by one, so there's that. Alexander Skarsgard carries over from "The Aftermath", which allows me to get to this one.
Speaking of Oscars, the annual TCM "31 Days of Oscar" programming starts tomorrow, and usually I'd list the films here and keep track of how many I've seen, and I MAY do that again, but my heart's just not in it, because I don't really like their organization method this year, other than the fact that all the films are Oscar WINNERS (sometimes they're just nominated ones) there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. I much prefer the years where they link films by actor, or organize by nominated category, or year, or even alphabetical. Perhaps there is some system to this year's line-up, but I don't see it yet. Anyway, here are tomorrow's films, so you can have some time to set your DVR:
TCM - "31 Days of Oscar" - Day 1, March 1
6:00 am "The Westerner" (1940)
8:00 am "The Harvey Girls" (1946)
10:00 am "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945)
12:00 pm "Mighty Joe Young" (1949)
2:00 pm "The Yearling" (1946)
4:15 pm "The Naked City" (1948)
6:00 pm "Key Largo" (1948)
8:00 pm "The Lost Weekend" (1945)
10:00 pm "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947)
12:15 am "Laura" (1944)
2:00 am "Gaslight" (1944)
4:00 am "Suspicion" (1941)
5:45 am "The Pride of the Yankees" (1942)
I think I've only seen three of these - "The Lost Weekend", "Gaslight" and "Suspicion", so I'm off to a terrible start, 3 out of 13 is just 23%. I'll stick with listing them for a while, but I don't think my stats will improve much, maybe I'm wrong.
THE PLOT: "Passing" follows the unexpected reunion of two high school friends, whose renewed acquaintance ignites a mutual obsession that threatens both of their carefully constructed realities.
AFTER: Even though this wasn't nominated for anything, my timing couldn't be better, because it's the last day of Black History Month (I may celebrate this topic later in the year, like I did in 2021) and tomorrow is the start of Women's History Month. So I'm sort of bridging the two topics with a film about two black women at a particular point in history, get it? I swear, my programming is a bit more random than that, but I do take advantage of the coincidences when they occur.
The title has more than one meaning here, of course it refers to black people who are able to "pass" as Caucasian, but also the women sort of meet again in "passing" - and there may even be another meaning at play here, but no spoilers. From what I heard at the theater, and from what I've read about the film, there's also a potential lesbian subtext, though I think the film is quite ambiguous on this point, probably on purpose to have more appeal. You could watch this whole film through and treat them as just two straight former friends, and that would work. You could also watch it and assume that they once had a sexual relationship, and are still attracted to each other on some level, despite both being married, and that would work, too. Usually I'd fault a film for not picking a lane on this point, but it seems carefully crafted in a way that will leave this point up to the viewer.
Irene and Clare bump into each other in NYC in the 1920's, after many years of not being in contact. Irene lives in Harlem, and Clare is just visiting town, and they meet in a hotel in a white neighborhood. Clare has been "passing" as white for some time, but Irene only manages to "pass" when she's by herself or in a mostly white crowd. The whole film is in black and white, perhaps to make the racial distinction clearer, or perhaps easier for both actresses to "pass", or perhaps just because black and white cinematography evokes the time period, so that this modern film will more closely resemble the films from that time that we're so used to watching.
Irene meets Clare's husband, who is, by our modern definition at least, very racist. Hell, he's racist for the 1920's, too, only they didn't call it that back then, they were just white people who hated black people. And it was a lot more acceptable then than now, obvi. After Clare writes Irene a letter and gets no response, she appears one day on Irene's doorstop, and gets to meet Irene's husband and two sons, who, well, have no chance of "passing" for white. Irene joins the couple for several nights out on the town, before she has to leave for Europe, where her daughter is attending school.
The reunion of the two women leads to complex problems in both of their marriages - while Clare seems to enjoy partying with Irene and her husband, eventually her presence causes some kind of division in that relationship - whether it comes from Irene's husband dancing with Clare, or Irene's own attraction to Clare, that also is up to the viewer. Clare's relationship with her husband is even more perilous, because if that man should ever see through her deception and realize that he is, in fact, married to a "colored woman", there's no telling what he might do.
That's it, that's the movie, but it's both a simple and a complex story, depending on what you want to see in it, I guess. And no spoilers here, for the usual reasons. But any two people who get back together after a long period apart might display this sort of fascination with each other's lives, and similarly, there's no telling the effect that reunited friends might have on each other, after a long time spent apart. But then you add this layer of racial tension on top of that, and, really, all bets are off.
It was very smart to shoot scenes in parts of NYC like Harlem and Brooklyn Heights, because there are still buildings in both neighborhoods that still have the look of the 1920's, from 100 years ago, just because that's when they really were built, and they haven't been changed at all.
Also starring Tessa Thompson (last heard in "Lady and the Tramp" (2019)), Ruth Negga (last seen in "The Samaritan"), André Holland (last seen in "Selma"), Bill Camp (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), Gbenga Akinnagbe (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Justus Davis Graham, Ethan Barrett (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Ashley Ware Jenkins, Amos Machanic.
RATING: 5 out of 10 glasses of iced tea
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