Friday, May 22, 2009
A Hero is Nothing But A Sandwich
I heard rumblings that this was a satisfying film to check out. I've seen it lumped in with blaxploitation films although like Claudine with Dihann Carroll and James Earl Jones or Charles Wright's Killer of Sheep. All three of these film are stories about regular African American folks getting by and getting through life's sometimes rough patches. The other films of this era were about "trying to get over" (Superfly--as the last line of the title song says) Or getting at the man. who might be the government or some cops or, my favorite, 1970s movie Mafioso.
Sure, there is some pretty arcane stuff in A Hero is Nothing But A Sandwich like an interminable dialog between the nationalist black power instructor rapping about the future with the Jewish reading and composition instructor or a rehab intervention smackdown that reminded me of something out of the ranch school in Billy Jack. I, a product of the seventies myself, like these kinds of time capsule moments.
Such moments ultimately do not matter because Hero is a fine well-crafted piece of American cinema which feels like a kind of not too distant relation to the kind of independent small movies that came on the scene a decade and a half later. Most obviously this film had two exceptionally high profile African American actors of their time coming back on screen together six or seven years after Sounder.
From Sounder to Sandwich. Here's how much time had passed. Kevin Hooks who was a focal point in Sounder and in a TV movie three years earlier about this kitty he found called J.T. is too old to play the barely teen junkie in Hero. Instead Hooks plays Tiger the small time lowlife dealer who gets Benjie (Larry B. Scott) on the mainline in no time.
Films about junkies are hard to watch and films about young smart people on junk get even tougher. But Hero is really a story of the human condition told with the same kind sensitivity that Tod Haynes gave to Safe As Safe is so much more than a film about environmental allergies, Sandwich is more than a story of a young kid on junk. Both are considered observations of the human condition well acted and interestingly crafted.
Hero's director Ralph Nelson has made a number of significant films (Soldier Blue, Charly, Lilies of the Field, and Requiem for A Heavyweight) I remember seeing two of his sixties films in theaters. The the nail biting air disaster procedural Fate Is The Hunter with Glenn Ford was the first second feature at a drive in I remember staying up and watching all the way through with my parents. Then there was Father Goose with Cary Grant an Leslie Caron. This bad broad comedy seemed to follow me like a disease getting booked as a second feature to a Disney cartoon or Don Knotts comedy at least twice that I can remember.
But the point is, Nelson knew how to make a film and here he had a lot to work with, not only to flight actors, but a solid screenplay by Alice Childress based on her novel. I first came across this book in the Young Adult section of a bookstore I worked at when I was going to college. Childress according to her Wikipedia article is most known for her work in theater. "She formed an off-broadway union for actors. Her first play, Florence, was produced off-Broadway in 1950. She was the first black woman to have a play produced professionally, and is also the first woman to win an OBIE award." I find this interesting because Hero very much has a play like structure, The first act is about Benjie getting hooked, the second is hitting bottom and going to rehab.
The third act of Hero is about the impact of the relationship between Benjie, his mom, grandmother, and the man who lives with them trying to surf the unknown of what their life and relationships are going to be after Benjie gets out of rehab. Winfield brings quite a lot to Butler, a former professional musician with service sector job who desires a stepfather role with Benjie. He describes himself well at one point: "I don't bother hardly nobody, but I am kind of direct in my way." His directness comes in inevitable conflict with the still fragile Benjie and his mother. But Nelson and Childress don't moralize or take sides in the battle. They instead keep to the view and perspective of telling a story about folks in complicated stead.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:07 PM
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