Dir. John Sayles, US, 2007, 124 mins
Cast: Danny Glover, Gary Clark Jr, Lisa Gay Hamilton
Review by Carol Allen
The setting is Alabama in 1950. Tyrone (Glover), proprietor of the broken down shack that is the Honeydripper Lounge is desperate to woo back the crowds, who used to come listen to the blues. Sonny Blake (Clark), is a freight train hopping drifter with a home made guitar, who moseys into town one day, captures the heart of Tyrone's pretty teenage daughter China Doll (Yaya DaCosta) and falls foul of the predictably racist local sheriff, played by Stacy Keach, in a role reminiscent of Rod Steiger's in "In the Heat of the Night".
We know from the moment Sonny appears that it's his newfangled Chuck Berry style rock n roll that is going to save Tyrone's bacon but the characters all ring true and hold your interest and the long awaited rock n roll sequence at the end is everything we are hoping for and more. Glover is excellent, showing Tyrone as a man of tired desperation but at the same time indicating the man he once was and he also appears to play a mean piano. There's some great heart lifting, toe tapping music woven into the story, including some old style blues numbers from Bertha Mae (Mable John), the elderly singer, who entertains the dwindling clientele of the Honeydipper lounge. Gary Clark Jr is not only a good musical performer but a handsome and engaging young actor as well and there's also an effective, rather Tennessee Williams style cameo from Mary Steenbergen as a former poor white, who married above her station and is riddled with insecurities and unconscious racism and a moving performance from Vondie Curtis Hall as Bertha Mae's devoted companion.
The film appears to be about life in the deep South before the civil rights movement, which it presents in subtle strokes - a glimpse of the “Coloreds Only” entrance to a building, the suspicion of the café owner when she sees Sonny on the white side of the tracks, the exploitation of the Sheriff's prisoners as virtually slave labour cotton pickers. But what it's really about is the inevitability of change as a positive concept and the need to embrace it and grow. Sayles is a director of integrity and this is a small but beautifully crafted film, whose strength is in its ensemble work – not a dud performance - and the skill, integrity and gentle comic irony of Sayle's writing. |
