Go read my friend Odie’s rave review of Beyond the Lights over at Rogerebert.com. All I can say is: WHAT HE SAID.
I read his review nodding to myself the whole time, vigorously, in agreement. YES. It is that good!
I am a huge fan of the work of director Gina Prince-Bythewood, and had high high hopes for Beyond the Lights. One of my favorite romances is her Love and Basketball (I babbled about it here), starring Sanaa Lathan, a woman I have gone on and on about before. One of my favorite actresses. Love and Basketball is that total rarity: a romance for grown-ups.
And so is Beyond the Lights.
Read Odie’s review. Go see this film.
You don’t get to complain about the crap “Hollywood” puts out there if you don’t go and see a film like Beyond the Lights. It’s smart, touching, angry, vulnerable, with fantastic performances. It is the stuff many audiences beg for, sick to death as many of us are of superhero bullshit and movies aimed at a teenage male demographic.
But still: Beyond the Lights almost didn’t get made at all. That’s the marketplace today. It’s old-school Hollywood, it’s the kind of movie Hollywood itself used to specialize in. The fact that it is here, and that it is good as it is, is not a surprise, to those of us who love Gina Prince-Bythewood’s stuff, but it is a triumph. It’s in theaters now.
One of my favorite films of the year.
I saw this about a week ago, and in less than ideal conditions (plane, so the audio was poor, but at least it wasn’t cut down) and I still keep thinking about it. I remembered your post recommending it, but I don’t think I was prepared for how simple and specific its pleasures were. A really, really well done character romance. And that other pleasure of behind the scenes in creative industries, and the more general pleasure of seeing people struggle to be good at their jobs.
It felt so much like that (vast) subgenre of au fanfiction where you know character x is is a famous y and character z encounters them and blah blah that I keep expecting to see the TV show that features Noni and Kaz in their original contexts. And most entries in that genre are dull and not my jam at all but when it’s masterfully done it is SO MY JAM and this movie was definitely masterfully done. And Gugu Mbatha-Raw is incredible. Her face made me cry several times, which was pretty embarrassing. Great movie! I am definitely going to keep an eye out for Love and Basketball now, sounds like it might deliver the same kind of goods.
Jessie – Yay!
I love your thoughts on fan fiction in regards to this movie – totally agree. I am still in shock about how well that opening scene works, when he first discovers her on the balcony. How does it work so well?? Why is it not SO CHEESY? I credit both actors (been a big Nate Parker fan since The Great Debaters) – for really “going there” in that moment – but Prince-Blythwood deserves most of the credit, for setting up that sequence with such care and tenderness that it actually is ABLE to “land.”
This is the kind of thing that, say, George Cukor was a master at. Those phenomenal “women’s pictures” of the 1940s.
I love that you were crying on the plane.
When she “goes back” to the Nina Simone …
Just so excellent.
I thought Minnie Driver was heartbreaking and awful too – a wonderfully driven performance.
Love and Basketball is one of my favorite romances of the last 20 years. What I love about Prince-Blythwood’s focus is that her characters (at least in these two movies) are not just about love. Very few of us ONLY care about love. We have other passions, other interests. And in Beyond the Lights and Love and Basketball – the characters have actual talent, and a calling.
So how does work and love mix? How do you manage it? Can love help? Or does it hold you back?
So often in romantic films, people have “jobs” – irrelevant really – fake jobs, sketched in – the only thing anyone cares about is finding a mate. But that’s not realistic. We have full lives. Prince-Blythwood really really CARES about these other issues and how they intersect with our romantic lives.
I loved it when the hairdresser returned in that final scene. Killed me.
So so glad you saw it!
It’s like Remains of the Day, which is my fav M-I pic. The characters exist before we meet them; their choices and being have social and ethical weight. The romance is a precipitating event and allows Big Feelings to crack open the characters so that all the other stuff that’s going on can be expressed and worked-through. So DELICIOUS.
Totally agree about the hairdresser and Minnie Driver. I really loved the way Noni’s hair was specific to her character and the plot without losing its potency as a personal and political symbol. It could have been too much but when you see her in the second half you just feel uplifted seeing it cloud so beautifully around her face. Hell her hair is so powerful it even frees Minnie’s hair at the end!
crying on the plane.
Oh lord, pinned between my partner and a stranger…oh no it’s okay these are good tears…I’m supposed to get a vegetarian meal….