The old saying is that a picture is worth 1000 words. Well, the words of Toni Morrison's modern masterpiece, Beloved, are brought to life in Jonathan Demme's 1998 film.
Beloved focuses on a runaway slave named Sethe who killed her baby daughter in frenzy to save her from “slavery” when slave masters tried to reclaim her and the rest of her children. Throughout the movie, Sethe and the other characters grapple with the reincarnation of the dead baby and the tragic memories of slavery and the murder while still looking toward the future and internal freedom.
First and foremost, Demme does a great job dressing the characters as 19th century freedmen to add to each character's personality and view of the movie. Most of the time, the characters are clothed in dark/ earth-toned colors like brown black or dark green. This shows how they are in a somber mindset. We only see the characters like Sethe and Baby Suggs in white (which represents innocence) in flashbacks of the past. In a way, this signifies how the past is looked upon in a more nostalgic view and as a “good old time” despite all the pain they've been through. One scene which popped out to me was when royal blues, pinks and purple cover the women and the house as Beloved, Denver and Sethe are celebrating their togetherness. It is really the only time where we see bold colors.
The novel Beloved is extremely dense and packed with several events from the past at Sweet Home to the present in Ohio. So, it is not hard to imagine that there was a lot of footage in the making of the film. Demme not only selected scenes that mirrored Morrison's story but highlighted scenes that would convey his own opinion on a theme. One great example of this is when Paul D first enters the Bluestone house. In the novel, Morrison explains how there was a “pool of pulsing red light” (17) as Paul enters through the house. Likewise, this event is brought to life as we see the character that plays Paul D stagger through the hallway due the unbearable presence of the red light.
On the other hand, Demme implements his point of view on Beloved through the incorporation of nature scenes. Beloved appears with bugs all over her body, even seeping into her mouth. Demme didn't just put add this scene to excite or frighten the audience. Nature is a symbolism of life and bugs are usually seen as disgusting and bad. Through this scene, Demme shows that Beloved is coming back to life and foreshadows her troublesome presence. However, at times, Demme's creativity was too much. He implemented an overload of sex and nude scenes that could've easily been replaced with the tidbits with Sixo and Sweet Home that I loved reading in Morrison's novel.
Lighting is a major device that Demme utilizes throughout the film. The central setting, 124 Bluestone Road, has little to no lighting inside throughout all of the scenes. Sometimes, it would even become difficult to see the defined facial expressions of the characters because of the darkness in the house. The lack of lighting reflects Sethe and Denver's living state which is very dark and dreary from the spite that baby Beloved puts on the Bluestone women. Lighting is only emphasized outside of the house and on Paul D. For instance, looking right outside onto Sethe's yard in the second scene, the sun shines brightly as the neighbors walk by. Here, Demme is subliminally revealing to the audience that the light/answer is beyond the borders of the Bluestone residence and with others who aren't in the baby's grasp - the community.
You may be wondering why this article isn't formatted in a typical review format. Well, to give a simple reason, Morrison's classic isn't like any other modern novel that I have read in class. It has so much depth to it. And so, when I watched the movie, it was almost too hard not to look at it the same way. And maybe for that same reason, I have so many biases toward the movie other than the positives I laid out before. I feel as though nothing can ever truly compare to Morrison's novel. And as the movie and the novel fade away in time as more controversial books and movies pop, this will never be the case for me.