This is from another site where I made an identical thread...
By brooklynwalker on Saturday, December 31, 2011 - 10:42 am:
I saw that movie a few years ago. I did like it. I cant stand when so called propper folks, wants everything with dark skin folks in it, to be propper. It was not a degrading film. It was about life in that area. I even enjoyed the Soundtrack. From Faye adams, to Rolls Royce. Then the scene with the little girl singing in the bathroom, and the love making scene, where suddenly he rejected his woman.
By _triplex_ on Saturday, December 31, 2011 - 11:12 am:
The soundtrack was the only good thing about it.
I didn't mind that the people weren't "proper" my problem was that they were stupid. Dude got paid and took the money to buy an engine for his dilapidated car even though everybody told him it was a bad idea and his family could use the money for something else. He did it anyway just so he could say he had a car and prove to his buddy he wasn't poor.
"WE AINT POOR, I give $hit to the Salvation Army, poor people can't do that. We aint eating wild greens from a vacant lot like so and so's family."
So he goes and buys the engine, his shiftless friend helps him carry it. They struggle to put it on the edge of the bed of a pick-up truck with no back on it. They take off and immediately the engine falls into the street and rolls down the hill. The friend says, "it's busted, we did all that work for nothing" and his family goes hungry because he wasted his money.
Any fool could see that engine wasn't going to stay in that truck. Dude's wife was fine as hell and he didn't want to have sex with her. Why? I still can't figure that part out.
By nappyheadedsoul on Saturday, December 31, 2011 - 12:43 pm:
i actually own a copy of that film, and i grew up not far from that area.
i see it as a non-linear cinematic narrative that captures the effect of the "american dream" on the black american psyche, and it's valuable for that reason alone.
like "syriana", it's meant to be confusing because the subjects and subject matter are confused and confusing, and like "the wire", it's meant to show a side of "black life" that's often deemed "unworthy" for "high art".
Okay, Nappyheadedsoul helped me see why it was acclaimed. Mr. Hudlin if you say it's a great movie I'll take your word for it, but all I got from it was angry.
