Black Or White – written and directed by Mike Binder. Drama Lite. 121 minutes Color 2015.
★★★★
The Story: The grandfather of a little girl of mixed race fends off adoption by her black grandmother.
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I think I’ll stop going to movies written by the director. I’ll find out beforehand and save my time and fee.
For I’ve grown tired of seeing films as ill judged as they usually are by author/directors. Films such as this one where only one half of the story is honored, where only one half comes to life. Directors who write their own stuff have virtually no sense of the quality, needs, or truth of their material. It’s their baby. They just want to get it on. Blind love, like the love of the grandmother for her worthless son.
In this case the film comes to life because of the rich playing of Kevin Costner. The camera and the story monopolize him to the point of such absurdity that he is even provided with a comic gremlin in the form of a tutor for his granddaughter, that is a waste of time and an insult to the audience’s credulity.
All this while, the black side of the “or” is under-written and played essentially for comic relief. Which is shameful. Aren’t those black folks funny! Are they musical, though! Don’t they know how to yell! Isn’t Ebonics entertaining!
The grandmother needs to be a lot crazier than Octavia Spencer is allowed to act her, and her son, the father of the child, needs to be extracted from the stereotype of a drug addict, which is all the writer is capable of. The writer knows nothing of black drug addicts. Or black people entirely. Their presence here under his pen is a rude imposture. A deed of racial profiling. The writing of the black folks lacks, not fairness, but the essential ingredient for all story-telling: imagination!
This means there is no real drama, no true pull, nothing deep at stake. For there is nothing human on the black side of the “or” in a story that requires absolute balance of the weightiest sort to get itself told in a way that counts.
What we leave with is a hugely improbably kitchen table speech of Kevin Costner at the courtroom, which he does beautifully, however, and which has so much truth to it, it is almost worth seeing the film for it.
As it is, without true, significant opposition to him, we have nothing to digest, nothing to stick to our ribs.