Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.17.08
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Certain historical flashpoints remain popular subjects for stories, because savvy authors recognize that we bring cultural awareness to the relationship between artist and audience: If the fictitious characters are constructed persuasively enough to co-exist with real-world events, the drama becomes even more intense.
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| August (Queen Latifah, left) is surprised to discover that Lily (Dakota Fanning) doesn't fear the winged insects that fill the hives and produce the sweet honey for which the Boatwright sisters have become famous. Indeed, Lily seems to understand — in a deeply spiritual way — when August speaks reverently of "the secret life of bees." |
Director/scripter Gina Prince-Bythewood's deeply moving adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees
is just such a story. Set in 1964 South Carolina, at a time when the rising civil rights movement actually made an already toxic racial environment even more combustible — because, to the hysterical rage of hard-core racists, African-Americans were daring to stand up for themselves — the narrative unfolds in a constant state of tension and suspense. All sorts of bad things seem to await these good characters.
Grief battles with pragmatism and hope, in a film highlighted by strong performances that allow us intimate and at-times painful access to these characters and their thoughts. And, as was the case with To Kill a Mockingbird
— with which this film shares both subject and tone — these events are filtered through the dawning awareness of a child, and her subsequent loss of innocence. In the case of 14-year-old Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning), she's not that innocent to begin with. As depicted in a brief but horrifying prologue, Lily believes herself responsible for her mother's death, years earlier, and has suffered ever since at the hands of a father, T. Ray (Paul Bettany), prone to casual cruelty.
T. Ray isn't exactly abusive, and we get a strong sense that he, too, is in a state of constant despair — such is the impressive subtlety of Bettany's performance — but that doesn't make his needlessly stern and unloving treatment of Lily any less heinous.
Things might be worse, were if not for the sheltering care extended by Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), who works for T. Ray and has become something of a surrogate mother to Lily. The girl, in turn, has grown to care for Rosaleen: enough to be quite concerned when the older woman quietly shares her intention to walk to a nearby town and register to vote.
Sadly, an almost inevitable encounter with some vicious white crackers goes as badly as could be expected.
Prince-Bythewood does not exploit this scene, but Rogier Stoffers' camera also doesn't flinch from it; we cannot help sharing Lily's sick and heavy-hearted reaction to what she witnesses. (Bullies are nothing new in the world, I realize, and yet I still find it difficult to comprehend that people would behave this way to another human being, based solely on skin color ... and that such behavior was considered acceptable, as recently as 44 years ago.)
Finally fed up with her own father, and worried about Rosaleen's likely future, Lily orchestrates a plan of escape and the two hit the road. Their destination — Tiburon, also in South Carolina — is governed solely by the fact that this town's name is printed on the back of one of the few mementos Lily has from her mother.
