I'm not sure that anyone who went to high school and took an American history class hasn't spent time considering the horror of being torn from the comfort of your life and family, chained and put on a ship, then sold and dehumanized to serve and be brutalized by slavery in the United States. If the filmmakers need to tell that story again--rather than exploit it--some thought needs to go into it. And in "Antebellum" there is some indication that this story has something different, telling a 3 "act" story of its central character Eden, enslaved and brutalized along with others on a plantation in the U.S. South. The filmmakers captured the brutalization and murders with conviction.
Unfortunately, the screenplay gives the considerable acting and production talent in this film nothing but platitudes to say, particularly in the second or middle "act" of the film. Janelle Monáe owns the camera whenever she appears. But the characters of a happy, exceptionally successful family ring so false with the cheerful adoring husband, the perfect child all decked out in an impossibly neat penthouse, and everyone sporting the highest fashion, trying to mimic what it means to be successful and "intellectual," as if conflict doesn't exist in family life or success (particularly in academia) isn't hard won and demanding. Any strength the entire film has is eradicated by how trite and superficial the "real" world of overcoming the economic limitations in a prejudiced society is depicted. Worse, the misuse of Gabourey Sidibe's considerable strengths imply that equality means you can demand how others treat you in the guise of rudeness and self-involvement and overt sexual exploitation. (Not cool, at all.)
While there was possibility in this material, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," used its premise to much greater and more pointed effect. Images from contemporary America are hastily and thoughtlessly grabbed and stuffed into the film. A statue of Robert E. Lee which in the news was concrete (or bronze) evidence of the egregious abuse of racism's scourge in contemporary America, and militias which almost over-turned the U.S. Constitution are used in the film like cardboard cutouts.
The final frames of the film which point to a good portion of America's obsession with reenacting its Civil War as if the wrong side won, is marketed by the economic system to suggest "The South will rise again" is wildly offensive--particularly when the filmmakers likely had the opposite idea in mind. The whole effort of the film becomes as sadistic and pornographic as those who revere the enslavement of a race of people.
Unfortunately, the screenplay gives the considerable acting and production talent in this film nothing but platitudes to say, particularly in the second or middle "act" of the film. Janelle Monáe owns the camera whenever she appears. But the characters of a happy, exceptionally successful family ring so false with the cheerful adoring husband, the perfect child all decked out in an impossibly neat penthouse, and everyone sporting the highest fashion, trying to mimic what it means to be successful and "intellectual," as if conflict doesn't exist in family life or success (particularly in academia) isn't hard won and demanding. Any strength the entire film has is eradicated by how trite and superficial the "real" world of overcoming the economic limitations in a prejudiced society is depicted. Worse, the misuse of Gabourey Sidibe's considerable strengths imply that equality means you can demand how others treat you in the guise of rudeness and self-involvement and overt sexual exploitation. (Not cool, at all.)
While there was possibility in this material, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," used its premise to much greater and more pointed effect. Images from contemporary America are hastily and thoughtlessly grabbed and stuffed into the film. A statue of Robert E. Lee which in the news was concrete (or bronze) evidence of the egregious abuse of racism's scourge in contemporary America, and militias which almost over-turned the U.S. Constitution are used in the film like cardboard cutouts.
The final frames of the film which point to a good portion of America's obsession with reenacting its Civil War as if the wrong side won, is marketed by the economic system to suggest "The South will rise again" is wildly offensive--particularly when the filmmakers likely had the opposite idea in mind. The whole effort of the film becomes as sadistic and pornographic as those who revere the enslavement of a race of people.