I am going to recommend Writer/Director James Toback's improvisational film BLACK AND WHITE for its intentions rather than for its execution. There can be no doubt that the single greatest spiritual problem Americans face today is our failure to deal with our racism. From it comes much of our violence, crime, drug addiction, depression, despair, political disaffection, and general degradation of the society. Further, our racism -- disguised, masked, ignored by the average American -- remains an extremely dangerous factor in our foreign policy, manifested in our mocking, dismissive, often ignorant attitudes toward other countries and their cultures.
Not very sharp for the Leader of the New World Order.
The problem is literally Black and White, and will remain so until we become something else.
Let me be clear. Racism is not bigotry. Racism is simply looking at another person and seeing, not just a human being, but a Black human being, or a Latino human being, or an Asian human being or a White human being. By that definition, most of us, in a society as diverse as ours, are racist, no matter what our color. To act on our recognition of a superficial difference in a derogatory way is bigotry. But after several hundred years of struggle (mostly by "people of color") we can deal with bigotry.
Imperfectly?
True.
But we can deal with it. We have laws and regulations against bigotry.
Racism is more singular, more personal, more painful, more wide spread, more subtle and almost impossible to regulate from the outside. It permeates our souls, our hopes for the future, our visions of life for our children and for our grandchildren.
We should therefore applaud and support our Spike Lees and James Tobacks for showing us scenes that may make some us uncomfortable.
James Toback's BLACK AND WHITE is a film that may make anyone uncomfortable. It explores the implications of the largely un-self-conscious efforts of large numbers of young people of various colors and backgrounds to mingle together in the few social corridors the society displays: sex, dope, fashion, music, poetry, and art. It is not surprising that, in the scope of this film, these corridors become a confusing maze. Possibly, that confusion represents part of Toback's "message."
A very large cast, made up of seasoned professional actors (Ben Stiller, et al), young beginning actors (Bijou Phillips, et al), sons and daughters of the entertainment industry (Kidada Jones, et al), amateurs, and celebrity cameos (- e.g., Marla Maples), follow a sprawling script and improvisational schema, which involves the music business, sports, the drug trade, turf wars, the legal system, family life, teenage wannabes, and documentary film making.
The unifying story, among several cross-currents, is one of how a largely innocent basketball player, Dean (Alan Houston), motivated indifferently by his cool model girlfriend Greta (Claudia Schiffer), is bribed to throw a game in a sting operation by an entrepreneurial cop (Ben Stiller). When he is turned "stoolie," it gets him killed by a young assassin (Scott Caan) at the behest of Cigar (Jared Leto), a neighborhood "boss." The assassin is the estranged son of a New York City Assistant DA (Michael Pare). If you don't get the racist and class components of this description, you have another reason to see BLACK AND WHITE.
The film is wrapped in the conceit of an "indie team" making a rather vague, improvised documentary film on the phenomenon of young white people trying to act, speak, dress, in fact become black. As Documentarian Sam (Brooke Shields) and her gay husband Terry (Robert Downey, Jr) record the process, it appears as difficult for whites to become black as blacks have found it to become white, over several hundred years.
It is here that execution becomes a problem.
Michael Powell (EDGE OF THE WORLD, 1937; THE 49TH PARALLEL, 1941; THE RED SHOES, 1948), one of the greatest of innovators and directors in Film, liked to reflect ruefully that the most successful of his later "outdoor" pictures, THE BLACK NARCISSUS (1947), which, incidentally dealt with a conflict of cultures, was constructed entirely in the studio; whereas his PURSUIT OF THE GRAF SPEY (1957) -- shot on a much larger budget, with real battleships, on location in the South Atlantic -- was a relative failure perhaps because his stylized studio sets of the Docks of Montevideo clashed artificially with the glorious scapes at sea.
Much of BLACK AND WHITE, especially portions involving amateurs, was apparently shot originally on tape, and has the soft, casual look of a home movie. Indeed, additionally, Sam is seen constantly hurrying around with the view screen of her little video camera in front of her face, and according to the Director, some of this tape is actually incorporated into the film. I see nothing wrong with the technique per se.
The problem arises when scripted scenes, shot on film, are mixed with taped scenes involving the professional actors, the young actors, the semi-pros, the celebrities, and the amateurs. It reminds me of the high school social science teacher who shows his class a professional short educational tape on racism, then unlimbers his video cam and says: "Today we improvise!" Everyone has fun, but the result tends to be a muddled mess, in part because the kids either don't know what to say or do, or they try to imitate the pros.
Toback and his assemblage are better than that, of course, but these taped scenes, contrasted with the professionally crafted scripted scenes (some of which have credibility problems of their own), often give BLACK AND WHITE a "Let's Make a Video" quality. It distracts from the crucial subject at hand.
Toback is also quite proud that he has adopted some of the improvisational techniques of British Director Mike Leigh, but Mike Leigh controls the whole process: scripts from the improvs, keeps style differences to an absolute minimum. Toback does not, and I'm afraid some of his rambling, uncertain scenes would not pass Leigh's muster.
In a sense, Toback has a similar problem in mixing styles to that which the society has in mixing classes and races. Whether or not, he took that into account, and thought he could overcome it, I can't judge.
And frankly, in the scripted portions, I never believed entirely in the relationships of Sam and Terry, or Tony and Greta.
This failing of technique is unfortunate because no film subject we are likely to see this year is more important.
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